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Nix on macOS

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β€œThere are still many issues with the Darwin platform but most of it is quite usable.” β€” http://yves.gnu-darwin.org200 Servers

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27 Apr 2026
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAK /opt/homebrew/bin/fish as expected 16:21:10
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAK Maybe launching fish with /opt/homebrew/bin/fish --login doesn't use the injected path from nix? Trying to look into it 16:22:06
@emilazy:matrix.orgemilyit's expected that you use Nixpkgs fish16:28:39
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAK I'm also trying this, but with this approach what's the intended way to launch the shell? /run/current-system/sw/bin/fish doesn't seem to work for me 16:51:35
@samasaur:matrix.orgsamasaur elaborate? what are you seeing when you say "doesn't seem to work for me"? 17:00:16
@reckenrode:matrix.orgRandy EckenrodeIs this the code-signing issue?17:01:13
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAKScreenshot 2026-04-27 at 20.15.08.png
Download Screenshot 2026-04-27 at 20.15.08.png
18:15:16
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAK So I'm not sure where to begin here. I'm trying to switch to fish now instead and that isn't working either. I have it set in my nix file, but after trying to do chsh -s /run/current-system/sw/bin/fish nothing happens, and /etc/shells looks empty? Not sure what could be going wrong here 18:15:19
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAKShoulnd't this just work, or am I missing something? Like for you guys who actually have fish setup what does your config look like?18:17:49
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAK

Homebrew fish works besides not having access to nix commands. Only workaround that does work so far is adding this to my system.nix file, but this seems like a hacky workaround. Like surely there is some way to make this actually work or?

security.sudo.extraConfig = ''
  Defaults secure_path="/Users/${username}/.nix-profile/bin:/etc/profiles/per-user/${username}/bin:/run/current-system/sw/bin:/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"
'';
18:20:19
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAKHas anyone here managed to configure your color filters? The accessiblity setting22:33:55
28 Apr 2026
@viraptor:tchncs.deviraptor you should be able to set it with defaults (available on nix-darwin). I think you're talking about: com.apple.Accessibility.{DarkenSystemColors,GrayscaleDisplay,InvertColorsEnabled}, right? Should be possible under system.defaults 12:02:14
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAK

I ended up doing this, but not sure if there's a better way. I don't think the options you're talking about are the same, this is adding a color tint to the screen:

CustomUserPreferences = {
      # Observed from System Settings after configuring Color Filters.
      "com.apple.mediaaccessibility" = {
        "__Color__-MADisplayFilterCategoryEnabled" = 0;
        "__Color__-MADisplayFilterType" = 16;
        MADisplayFilterSingleColorIntensity = 0.7100822925567627;
      };
13:01:44
@emilio-ak:matrix.orgEmilioAKI think I'm pretty much done with my first config now if anyone wants to take a look and give feedback or anything. Did this on a VM while trying to recreate my current setup 😁 https://github.com/EmilioAK/nix-darwin-config13:05:02
@alexfmpe:matrix.orgalexfmpeI dunno about color filters, but I'd be very careful about setting non-packaged preferences on nix-darwin23:01:18
@alexfmpe:matrix.orgalexfmpemessing with some of them can bork your system and force you to log into recovery mode or whatever it's called to repair the plist files manually23:02:07
@alexfmpe:matrix.orgalexfmpeask me how I know23:02:48
@alexfmpe:matrix.orgalexfmpehappened to me with setting the locale or language or something23:03:13
29 Apr 2026
@zeroq7k:matrix.orgzeroq7k joined the room.12:47:27
@zeroq7k:matrix.orgzeroq7k Hey there, I'm very new to nix & nix-darwin; I was just reading into it over the weekend for several hours and have one question before going to try it out: Let's say I just set one single element in systems.default (e.g. dock.autohide) and then let it run on a system which is already in use and has changed several system settings already. Now, will nix/nix-darwin reset all those changed settings to their defaults used in nix-darwin or will it just set the single setting I added to my flake.nix (the dock.autohide) and leave everything else as it is right now?12:59:31
@anicolao:matrix.orgAlex NicolaouTry asking these sorts of questions of Gemini β€” the LLMs are pretty solid in nix usage and will give you good answers a large percentage of the time. tl;dr: it will not reset other settings.13:03:24
@k900:0upti.meK900That is absolutely not a recommendation I would make tbh13:03:43
@k900:0upti.meK900Especially when there's risk of data loss13:03:49
@anicolao:matrix.orgAlex Nicolaouhave you had a bad experience? 13:04:09
@k900:0upti.meK900I've seen plenty13:04:30
@zeroq7k:matrix.orgzeroq7k Thanks, I do – with mixed results. But I'm not trusting the replies; you get different things when asking in different ways... "Is it correct that xyz?" will always give you a "yes" answer :-)13:05:06
@anicolao:matrix.orgAlex NicolaouI am set up with a fairly minimal base system for nix-darwin and nixos, then a home manager setup for tools that are truly common across my projects, then flakes for each project with the specific tools for that project, and find that using LLMs to write the nix configurations and manage the various layers is dramatically faster and easier than writing them myself. Since it's all backed by git as well as nix's own ability to roll back configurations, I have never experienced the 'data loss' that k900 is referring to. I consider it one of the great strengths of the nix ecosystem in the age of AI β€” it is finally usable for anyone who cares to understand the high level, without needing to spend ages mucking around with the configurations yourself, while still being legible/understandable when you want to see what the configuration is (assuming you take the time to learn to read and write nix code)13:08:19
@zeroq7k:matrix.orgzeroq7k fwiw, a chsh -S /path/to/shell will never be successful as long as /path/to/shell isn't in /etc/shells. But I guess you already knew that... 13:08:43
@zeroq7k:matrix.orgzeroq7k Thanks for sharing your experience; I am still at the stage where I try to understand the high level architecture before really diving into using it. yes, I know, I'm slow but I'm one of those guys who invest time into understanding instead of just playing around and copy & pasting commands :-)13:13:18
@anicolao:matrix.orgAlex NicolaouOh, to be clear, it's not that I think you shouldn't understand nix. but since all the resources are out of date and all the advice out there is wrong, usign the LLMs to help you figure it out and understand it will be an accelerant. It's still worth slogging through the ancient nix pills series and reading all you can about flakes, but there is no good on ramp available to make it so that your first configurations come out right to begin with.13:15:01

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