First run

You’ve run the install and the first darwin-rebuild switch has finished. Here’s what changed and what to try first.

What just happened

AeroSpace (tiling) is running. Windows now arrange themselves.
SketchyBar replaced the menu bar with workspace pills, weather, media, battery, and a clock.
Ghostty is your terminal; opening it drops you straight into a zellij session, themed in fog-grey.
Pounce is listening on ⌘Space.
The haus command is on your PATH.

The four moves to learn first

⌘Space — Pounce

Open the command palette. Type to fuzzy-search apps and commands, hit Return. Start here for everything.

Tap ⇪ — Launch mode

Tap (don’t hold) Caps-Lock, then press an app’s letter to launch or focus it. T = terminal, B = browser out of the box.

Tap ⇪, then ←↓↑→ — Focus

Tap Caps-Lock, then an arrow to move focus between tiled windows — keep arrowing to keep moving. Hold ⇧ with an arrow to move the focused window instead. No Vim keys to learn.

Tap ⇪, then 1–4 — Workspaces

Tap Caps-Lock, then a digit to jump to that workspace — the same leader that launches an app. Add ⇧ to the digit (or to an app’s letter) to throw the current window there instead.

Try this sequence

Tap ⇪, then T — Ghostty opens and tiles. You’re in zellij.
⌘Space, type saf, Return — Safari launches. That’s Pounce.
Tap ⇪, then ← / → — focus jumps between the two windows (keep arrowing).
⌥/ — the tiled split flips between horizontal and vertical. (⌥, swaps to an accordion instead.)
⌘Space, type emoji, Return — the palette swaps to an emoji grid in place. Pick one; it’s copied (and pasted, if you granted Accessibility).

Grant Accessibility to Pounce (one-time)

Some Pounce features (clipboard auto-paste, emoji paste) synthesize keystrokes, which macOS gates behind Accessibility:

pounce --request-accessibility   # approve the system dialog
pounce --check-accessibility     # prints true when it's granted

Make it yours

Your identity and app list live in ~/.config/nix/hosts/<hostname>/default.nix. Open it fast with:

haus edit

A few first tweaks people reach for:

{
  # Change the accent that tints lazygit, fzf, yazi, and the browser
  nebelhaus.theme.accent = "sapphire";

  # Prefer a different editor
  nebelhaus.hearth.editor = "nvim";

  # Add an app to the launcher + workspace roster
  nebelhaus.apps.slack = {
    key = "s";
    name = "Slack";
    workspace = "S";
    appId = "com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap";
    barIcon = ":slack:";
    cask = "slack";
  };

  # Or just install casks without giving them a launcher key
  homebrew.casks = [ "discord" ];
}

Then apply it:

haus rebuild

See Theming & accents, Window management, and the full options reference to go deeper.

Daily driving from here

Command	What it does
`haus rebuild`	Build, then switch — your everyday apply
`haus update`	Pull new nebelhaus versions, then rebuild
`haus status`	Current generation + how stale the rice is
`haus rollback`	Return to the previous generation
`haus doctor`	Health check: Nix, CLT, GUI agents, cask drift

The full list is on the haus CLI page.