What To Know When Switching From Windows To Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. If you've recently switched from Windows to Mac here are some things that can help you out. 

So after switching from windows to Mac you may have noticed that there are a lot of differences between Windows and macOS. Let's take a look at some of these differences and how to get things done in macOS.

So first let's take a look at the keyboard. The keyboard on Mac is different than the one on Windows. For one thing the Command Key is the primary modifier for keyboard shortcuts. On Windows it is Control. So, for instance, on Windows you would use Control C to Copy. But on Mac you use Command C. But Mac also has a control key. It is not used quite as much but often in combination with Command. So you might find a keyboard shortcut is Control Command and then a letter. Also the Option Key and Shift Key are other modifier keys that might be used in keyboard shortcuts. The Option Key is sometimes called the Alt Key by people that used to use Windows because, more or less, in Apps the Alt Shortcuts map to Option Shortcuts on the Mac. 

Another modifier key that you'll find sometimes is the Globe Key or fn key. On newer Macs it's got both symbols or just the Globe. On older Macs you might find just the fn symbol there. This was traditionally used in conjunction with the F keys at the top of the keyboard but more and more Apple is using it for other keyboard shortcuts as well. 

If you want to learn Mac Keyboard Shortcuts it's relatively easy because you've got the Menu Bar at the top. The Menu Bar is where you'll find most of the Commands for the App that you're using. So here I am in the Finder and I've got the Menu Bar for the Finder. If I click on File I've got all these commands. The keyboard shortcut for any command is to the right of that command. So in this case Option Command N is the keyboard shortcut for a New Finder Window. So if you don't know how to do something find it in the logical menu for that item in the Menu Bar and then look at the keyboard shortcut for that item to the right. 

But there's another major difference between how Mac users use Macs versus Windows users use Windows. That is that most Mac users have a trackpad. All the MacBook models of course come with it built-in. Most Macs sold are MacBooks. But even those that get iMacs, MacPros, and Mac Minis a lot will buy the trackpad instead of a mouse. So you've got a ton of functionality in the trackpad, which is a multi-touch device that's very capable of lots of gestures besides just pointing at something and clicking on it. If you go into System Settings and then you go to trackpad you'll actually see three different sections of gestures here. You can look through these and see what's possible. When you move your pointer over one of these you'll see it demonstrated there at the top. Mastering these trackpad gestures can make you more productive. The trackpad is exactly what a lot of people really love about Macs. So, get to know it. 

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Now speaking of the Menu Bar, the Menu Bar is fundamentally different on macOS than it is on Windows. Instead of having an individual Menu Bar over every window there's a single Menu Bar that is at the top of the screen. Whatever window you have selected, that's the Active window, that's what the Menu Bar up there gives you control over. So, for instance, I've got the Notes App open and the Notes Window is the active window. So, I'll see Notes here at the top left as the first menu and then all of these other menus, they reflect commands that I can perform on the content of this window. If I were to switch to another app, like Safari, you would see Safari here and then all of this applies to this Safari window here. Windows quite often still have what are called Toolbars here at the top with some buttons on them. So you don't always need to go up to the Menu Bar to use these items. A lot of times they are also mirrored here. But a lot of Mac users like to use Keyboard Shortcuts to do things like, Make This Text Bold, rather than go up to the Menu item here and use the Menu Bar to do it. 

The Menu Bar in Mac Apps tends to be really comprehensive with lots of menus and submenus for all sorts of things. If you can't find what you need you can always go to Help which is almost always present and Search. You would think this just searches documentation. But, it actually can search the Menu Bar as well and help you find a menu item. You can even issue the command from here or learn where it is using this and issue the command in the Menu Bar. 

To work with Files and Folders on Mac you use, what's called The Finder. This is kind of like an app that is always running, similar to Windows Explorer. A typical Finder window may look like this showing you the contents of a folder. But it is important to know that you have four different views that you can use in any Finder window to view the contents there. You can use Icon View like this. You can use List View which is useful because it has columns that you can customize so you can sort, say, by size. You can also go to Column View which is like a tree view of all of the contents in here, and there's Gallery View which is useful for looking through a folder say full of media or images. You can look at more than one location at a time by having multiple tabs open in a Finder window or just opening up another Finder window. So you can see here in this Finder window I'm looking at a Folder named Demo and in this Finder window I'm looking at a Folder named Images. The most straightforward way to move a file from one location to the other is to have two windows like this open and then Drag from one to the other. 

But I know a lot of Window users like to Copy & Paste using keyboard shortcuts to move files. You can do the same thing on the Mac but it works kind of in an opposite way. You would select a file like this one and then use Command C or Edit Copy to select it. It stays there because you're copying, not cutting, like you would be on Windows. Then you can go to a new location. I'll dive down into this Folder here. Instead of pasting which would create a duplicate of that item and put it here, you hold the Option Key down and you then select the same item which now changes to Move item here. So Option Command and V moves the item there. That's how you use Keyboard Shortcuts to move a file on the Mac. You've also learned something else here. That is that many menu items have alternate commands that can be issued if you just hold the Option Key down to see how these commands change. 

Now the way you typically launch an app on a Mac is to use the Dock. The Dock is along the bottom of the screen. You can have it set to be hidden, like I do here, or have it always shown. If Hidden you just move the pointer down to the bottom and it appears. When you want to launch an app you just click on it there in the list. You can customize this to add the apps you want. To do that you can just go to the Applications Folder, find the app you want to add, and drag it into the Dock. Now you've added that one. To get rid of one you can just drag it up to the top part of the screen until you see Remove and then drop it out. So you can customize this even moving these around to rearrange them. You can also launch apps using this Apps Icon in the Dock. Which brings up Spotlight in Application Launcher Mode. Then you can search by typing or just scroll through here and select the app that you want to launch. 

Now on a Mac, like in Windows, you may have lots of different windows open from different apps. There are many ways to switch between them. To switch between apps use the App Switcher, which is Command and continue to hold the Command Key down and then Tab and it brings up the App Switcher. Continue to press Tab to move to the app you want. Then release Command and then that app will jump to the front. When you're in an app that has more than one window, like I have a two Pages documents open here in two different windows. You can switch between them by using Command and then the Backtick key, which on US Keyboards is right above the Tab. Just click that with Command and it will switch between all of the windows for that app. 

But there are also much more advanced ways to do it. One is you can use Mission Control. A quick way to access Mission Control is Control and then the Up Arrow. Then it shows you all of the windows here and you can select the one that you want to switch to. There's also something called App Expose which is Control and then Down Arrow. That will show you all the windows open for the current app and recent documents as well. Then you can use Tab key to tab between all of the different apps you've got open to see all of the windows and then select the one you want. 

Now another approach is to use something called Stage Manager. You go to Control Center here by clicking on this. More about that in a minute. Then turn on Stage Manager with this button here. Now you've got your Windows grouped by app here on the left. This is also highly customizable in terms of what is grouped together and how these appear.

Now one thing that confuses Windows users when they first get their Mac is this red button at the top left corner. It's got a little X in it when you move your pointer over it so you would think that if you click it, it closes the Window and quits the app. That's how it works in Windows. But on Mac it does indeed Close the window. But notice it doesn't quit the app. Pages is still running here. You can see it here in the Menu Bar and if you look in the Dock you'll see a dot underneath it there in the dot showing it is still running. The way this works is that it lets you close a document and you still have the app running so now you can go and open up another document without having to quit the app. If you do want to quit the app it is simple to do. Go to the Menu item with the name of that app right there and then the last item is always quit or just simply Command Q. This quits the app. It is perfectly fine to leave the app running. It uses very little resources. Macs are excellent at memory management. But also, if you do quit an app like that, notice that by default that when you relaunch the app the window reopens with the document that was there before. You'll even be in the same spot, doing the same thing you were before. So it is easy to quit apps and then resume working later on by just launching the app. 

Also, when switching between apps you'll often end up with windows from other apps behind the window you're using now. It is very easy to use the Hide command which you'll find in the app menu here and Hide the current app or just use Command H. But also you can use Command Option H and hide others. Hide everything but the current app. Notice here I've been showing you Pages. Pages is an Apple App that's free and it is a word processor. Also a Page Layout App. Apple has other apps as well like, for instance, the Numbers App is a spreadsheet app that actually has some really interesting visual elements you can add. You've got the Keynote App which is like powerpoint. A Presentation App. There are a lot of other apps that come with your Mac like the Notes, Reminders, Contacts, and Calendar apps for productivity. You've got Mail as a native email app that can interface with just about any email server. You've got Safari as the default web browser. A lot of people like it because of its privacy features. 

In a lot of cases you can certainly stick with Windows Apps when moving to Mac. For instance you can get Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and Excel for Mac and they work great. But you can also use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. As a matter of fact even if you're sticking with, say, Word for a while get to know Pages bit-by-bit and you'll find eventually that most things that you want to do you can just do in Pages and may eventually be able to leave Word behind. 

Another powerful feature of macOS you should get to know it Spotlight. So Spotlight has a button up here at the top but you can also just use Command Space to bring it up. You can search for just about anything here. If you do a Search you'll get Files but you'll also find apps, you'll find Mail, you'll find Messages, you'll find Fonts. All sorts of different things will come up with a Spotlight Search. You can get more specific though. If you click on this button here or just use Command 1 then you can just search for apps. It is great to be able to launch apps this way. You can also do Command 2 and now you're just searching for Files. You can even narrow it down more with Categories here at the top. Command 3 includes some powerful Actions. Things you can do right in Spotlight. Like for instance you can send a message to somebody in Spotlight without even launching the Messages app. Command 4 is the Clipboard History. But even in its regular mode here it has tons of powerful features. For Instance, you can use it as a Calculator. So you can do things like this and just get an answer there without having to launch another app. Or you can quickly get the Weather. There are a ton of different things that Spotlight can do and you'll discover more the more that you use your Mac. 

Now to customize your Mac the main tool you use is System Settings. You probably have it in the Dock but you can always get to it through the Apple Menu. You've got tons of System Settings with categories here on the left and then it will break them down into settings or subcategories here on the right. So, for instance, for Appearance here I've got all the settings here and I can change things like the Icon & Widget style, the default folder color, a lot of things about how windows work. You've got things in Desktop & Dock for how those features of your Mac work. You've got controls for things like Displays, your Desktop Wallpaper, and so on. Some of the things you should look up right away are under Keyboard here. Look at Keyboard Shortcuts. This allows you to customize some of the system keyboard shortcuts. Things that aren't found in the Menu Bar because they work everywhere. Like, for instance, you can go to Spotlight and add any keyboard shortcut you want to show that app sections of it. In addition you can also go down to App Shortcuts here and actually add or modify an existing keyboard shortcut that's in any menu item in any app.

But there's also a quicker way to change some settings. That's to use Control Center which we have looked at before. You have a lot of individual Controls here some of which are just On/Off switches and some of which you can dive down into deeper like that. You can also customize Control Center adding controls from all sorts of different apps and the system over here moving things around. Even adding more than one Control Center that will appear here. 

Finally, let's talk about installing new apps and Security. Your Mac comes with an app called The App Store. This is where you can get apps from a marketplace controlled by Apple. So developers can submit apps to The App Store and they would appear here after security checks. Not perfect. But for the most part it's very difficult to be able to slip any malware into The App Store. So you are fairly well protected if you only download apps from The App Store. 

But you can also download apps from the web. When you do so you'll be asked to confirm. It will go into the Downloads Folder, like that. Usually web app installs work by giving you a disk image which then you would open up and you'll see instructions like this. Simply drag the app to the Applications Folder. This being a shortcut to the Applications Folder. So after you Drag & Drop into there it simply moves the entire app package onto your Mac. An app install is usually as simple as that. Rarely do apps install other elements in other parts of the operating system. It is just one app inside of one package in your Applications Folder. Which is why in most cases you can delete them by just dragging those to the trash. 

For Security you may also be wondering which anti-malware app you should get for your Mac. But here's the thing. Your Mac already comes with that. macOS includes something called XProtect. It just runs in the background. You can read more about it here but just like regular anti-malware software it has definitions and it is looking out for malware attacks and updating itself all the time. So you've already got that installed. By simply sticking to The App Store when you can and only downloading software from sites you trust, plus with the help of XProtect on your Mac, you are very well protected against malware. 

I hope all this information makes your switch from Windows to Mac easier. Here at MacMost.com and the MacMost YouTube channel I've got tons of other videos to help you learn about other aspects of macOS and Mac Apps. Thanks for watching.