Guide to windows users switching to macOS
This guide aims to give some tips to the Windows users who never put their hands on a Mac to ease their transition to MacOS, and compile a set of tips I wish I had known when switching to mac. Thus, it will be mostly beginner oriented. However, you may find more advanced tips (especially for developers), therefore don’t hesitate to have a look I you are already familiar with this great OS.
What about Linux users ? Well, I bet you also know Windows, so I assume you will understand the concepts I am refering to that are specific to Windows (Start Menu, explorer) quite easily ; you do not need this much previous knowledge of Windows to understand those tips anyway !
Hardware
Trackpad
Common
Your finger should not quit the trackpad, only apply pressures to trigger clicks.
To trigger a right click (contextual menu), apply a pressure with two fingers.
To switch between Desktops, which are automatically created when you open an app in fullscreen, use three fingers to slide to the left or to the right.
To quickly show Launchpad (cf. Sotware > Common apps), pinch as if you wanted to zoom out, with three fingers.
To quickly show the Desktop, pinch as if you wanted to zoom in, with three fingers.
Multitask
One thing to understand about multitask in MacOS is that the system prefers considering Apps rather than windows. Therefore, when you try the Command ⌘ + Tab shortcut (which naturally feels close to this good old Alt+Tab), the system shows a list of the open apps without giving the details of each window opened by each app.
A very useful option when you have multiple windows of an app is to add the Three fingers slide down gesture in the options ( menu > System preferences > Trackpad > Additional gestures), which shows all the windows of this specific app.
Three fingers to the top shows all the opened windows.
Unfortunately, I did not find anything similar to the three fingers slide left/right of Windows (which basically triggers an alt+tab). Don’t hesitate to submit your contribution to this article (see : contributing) if you have some.
We will see more about multitask in the Software part.
Keyboard
The Control key is replaced in most shortcuts by the Command ⌘ key. For example, Ctrl+C for copying to clipboard is replace by Command ⌘ + C.
On new Mac layouts, the alt key is named option.
You can use fn+backspace to emulate a suppr press.
~ is on option + n
control command space for emojis instead of windows .
Mouse
If you’re using your mac with a mouse, scrolling may feel very weird at the beginning. Indeed, the scoll direction is inverted compared to Windows. This is fortunately tweakable in menu > System preferences > Mouse > Natural scrolling. The drawback is that it will invert the scrolling of the trackpad, if you are using one.
I have no magic solution for that. If you know a software able to invert the scrolling only on the mouse, feel free to submit them in the contributions.
Software
Common apps correspondance
The Finder (the logo with a smiling face) corresponds to the Windows explorer.
The Launchpad (the logo with coloured tiles, next to the finder) corresponds to the part of the Start Menu listing your apps.
The Spotlight search (the search logo next to the date in the top bar, accessible via Command ⌘ + Space ) corresponds to the search part of the Start Menu. It enables you to quickly find documents, apps, and can even perform some math (try typing 2+2 !).
The Dock is the name of the task bar.
The activity monitor is the equivalent of the Task manager.
The notification zone, in which all applications running in background such as antivirus gets their icon at the very right of the task bar, also has its counterpart. You may have guessed it is located at the right of the menu bar (the bar at the top of the screen). You can manage icons placement by holding Command ⌘ and by dragging each icon. Unfortunately, it lacks the option to fold the rarely used apps. You can patch this by using one of those tiny open source utilities :
Using apps
The menu bar is not located at the top of the window, it is instead located in the top bar of MacOS. See its items change when changing apps.
Installing apps
On Windows, you’re used to install software by downloading .exe or .msi installers which aims to guide you through a setup wizar. More rarely, you may find directly usable apps compressed in .zip archive and directly usable after extraction. And, of course, since Window 8, the Windows store added a handy way to download apps, but you will find a restricted selection of apps on it.
On MacOS, the principle is similar. You have three types of files when downloading an app from the web :
.pkgfiles : these are similars to the .exe and .msi, when opening they will guide you through an installation guide.zipor.appfiles (.zipoften contains a.appitself) : these are directly Apps usable when you lauch them (don't forget to open the.zipfile in the case of an archive). You may drag them in you Application folder to access them from the Launchpad or Spotlight..dmgfiles : these are a bit particular, they mount virtual volumes in which an.appis contained. Most of the time, when launching them, they will invite you to drag and drop this App to your Application folder. After doing so, wait for the full copy of the file to be completed (the end of the operation can be heard by the "file moved" sound of the Finder), and then you can safely unmount the volume (in the left bar of the finder, by clicking on the little arrow facing the name of the drive), and delete the.dmgfile.
One common pitfall when downloading software from the Internet is that it may not be properly signed. Thus, MacOS will prevent you from installing it with a beautiful warning window like this :
If you trust the source even though the file is not signed, open the folder where the .app is located (most often, in Application folder), right click on the app name, select Open in the contextual menu, and you will have an "open anyway" option in the pop-up that will show.
Store
Similarly to the Windows store, MacOS have an App store, which requires you have an Icloud account connected to your system (the App store will prompt you to create one or to associate one with MacOS if you have not done it yet).
Last but not least, for most advanced users, a command line app manager similar to apt-get on Linux or Chocolatey and Scoop on Windows exists on MacOS, named Homebrew. It is able to install command line apps as well as graphical apps like Spotify, VSCode, Firefox, and others. Very useful for scripting the installation of you favourite apps on multiple systems and sometimes faster than using the web installers.
Multitask
Keyboard shortcuts
To switch between apps, use Command ⌘ + Tab , which will bring to front every window of the selected app.
To switch between the windows of an app, use Command ⌘ + ` .
If you’re used to the windows shortcut, showing directly all the opened windows, you might find these a bit frustrating. To fill this gap, the Alttab (https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/) util brings a solution. It works as you would expect. It also adds a handy way to switch between the windows of a same app, you can use alt (option) + < on azerty layout (may differ on qwerty though).
To switch between virtual desktops, use control + left arrow or control + right arrow.
Window management & Splitting screen
You may be confused by the three colored dots in the top left hand corner of each window, as they work quite differently from what they do in windows. The red dot hides an app but do not quit it completely, it sort of put in cache, as you can see in the Dock. Indeed, when closing an app this way, a dot stays below the logo of the app, showing it is still considered open. In order to quit an app as you would do in Windows, press Command ⌘ + Q (Q like Quit).
The yellow dot work as you would expect, except that the minimized window dot not go inside the logo of its app, but on the right side of the Dock.
The green dot sets an app in full screen, creating a new virtual desktop. To go back to the other windows, switch between your virtual desktops (see hardware > trackpad).
The native way to split screen between two apps is to hold click on the green dot and select a tiling mode**.**
This create a new desktop
It seems impossible to reduce a window by clicking on its icon in the Dock as you would do in Windows, because of the multitask system based on apps. Indeed, you cant reduce a window by clicking on an app icon. You’re condamned to use the yellow dot, although I personally almost never use it.
Utils
Ccleaner, the good old one, is useful when it comes to free some disk space and uninstall apps, as you would do on Windows. I personally prefer it to CleanMyMac, which is heavier and have most of the features that are not present in ccleaner becoming unavailable in the free version after the trial period which lasts something like 30 days.
I was disapointed to find nothing exactly similar to the wonderful TreeSize, but the Disk Inventory X does a pretty good job indentifying heavy folders on your hard drive.
Finder magic tricks
Get the absolute path of a file
On windows, the path bar is shown by default and behaves like a browser address bar. On mac, you have to go in the Finder View menu > Show path bar, click the file you want, and right click on the last item in the Path bar, and finally “copy filename as …”.
Open an iTerm tab in current folder
You may want to open a command prompt in the current Finder window you are navigating. iTerm does not seem to supply it automatically, so here are two links to remedy this tragedy :
Create a blank text file in current foler
Yah, I know you could open a terminal with the previous tip, touch the file you want, and exit. But hey, is this extra exit useful at all ? Here are two more links to achieve this quite easily :
Misc
To rename a file, F2 is not available. Instead, use Enter. It may be quite confusing because you may feel as if you were opening the document. Do not worry, the document will not open, unless you press Command ⌘ + O .
To delete a document, Command ⌘ + backspace will do the job.
In the terminal, the tree command is not directly available. You can install it via brew install tree.
Contributing
This article is hosted on github at https://github.com/AyymericArn/medium (in posts/”the folder named after the title of the article”) .
Therefore, if you have any addition to suggest, feel free to make me a PR on the repo associated with the article. Any contributor will be listed below.
Thanks !
