My favorite thing to do on a new laptop

2026-05-21
#tech #git #learning

As a developer I’ve come to appreciate efficiency and little things that save me time. Whether it’s a script, an alias, or a tiny workflow improvement that removes repetitive friction, those small optimizations add up quickly over time. Every new laptop starts with the same ritual: setting up my .gitconfig.

It’s one of the first things I configure because Git is something I interact with every single day. A good setup means fewer keystrokes and less mental overhead. From simple aliases like git st for git status to shortcuts that make branching, rebasing, and committing feel effortless, my .gitconfig has slowly become a collection of quality-of-life improvements I can’t live without.

My favorite one
Terminal window
[alias]
newbranch = "!f() { \
    git checkout main && \
    git pull && \
    git checkout -b \"$1\"; \
}; f"%

The problem this solved was the constant repetition of creating branches from an outdated local main branch. I used to manually switch branches, pull the latest changes, and then create a new branch every single time I started work on a task. It’s a small process, but one that happens so often it becomes annoying surprisingly quickly.

Now I can simply run:

Terminal window
    git newbranch feature/auth-page

…and immediately start working from a fresh, up-to-date branch without thinking about the setup steps. It removes friction, reduces mistakes, and makes starting new work feel instant — which is exactly the kind of developer experience I love optimizing for.

Others I can’t live without:

Terminal window
[alias]
    co = checkout
    br = branch
    ci = commit
    st = status
    commit-empty = !echo 'git commit --allow-empty -m \"chore: Empty commit to re-trigger build\"' && git commit --allow-empty -m \"chore: Empty commit to re-trigger build\"
    delete-local-branches-already-merged-in-remote = !echo 'git branch --merged | egrep -i -v(main|master|develop|dev|staging|release)| xargs -r git branch -d' && git branch --merged | egrep -i -v '(main|master|develop|dev|staging|release)' | xargs -r git branch -d

How does one create Git Aliases:

There are 2 ways in which you can create git aliases. My favorite - editing the .gitconfig directly and adding the aliases in as we have done above.

Another way that you can add alias is by running these commands in your terminal:

Terminal window
$ git config --global alias.co checkout
$ git config --global alias.br branch
$ git config --global alias.ci commit
$ git config --global alias.st status

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