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I am new to Mac OS, give me your favorite or preferred settings/ tools!
This is the first time in my career that a Mac is the preferred machine for an organization. I've been using Windows for 30 years. This is a big change for me but I want to learn some useful tips and tricks on Mac os.
This could be "what are some changes you made on the Mac settings to make your Mac experience feel more comfortable?" Or "what tool on Mac can you not live without?"
There aren't any rules really, I want this to be a fun conversation, thanks everyone!
I find it's all about keyboard shortcuts and trackpad gestures. I'm quite a bit more productive as a keyboard shortcutter on Mac than I am Windows.
cmd + tab is your alt-tab equivalent. On Mac, you can go one layer deeper alt-tabbing, though. If you do cmd + ` you get to cycle/alt-tab through windows of the same application (so imagine you have three browser windows open, you can cycle through them nicely). Both cmd + tab and cmd + ` can be modified to go in reverse order by adding in shift.
cmd + l in your browser jumps focus onto the address bar.
cmd + [ or cmd + ] can pretty reliably move you left or right by one tab in an application.
cmd + 1 or cmd + 2 ... can semi-reliably jump you to the first or second tab.
cmd + shift + 3 takes a screenshot and saves it to the desktop
cmd + shit + 4 starts up a 'snipping tool'-like grabber and let's you select an area to take a screenshot. Two useful modifiers. Hold control while you release the cursor and you'll put the screenshot on your clipboard only and not save a copy to desktop. Take space after you've done cmd/shift/4, and you'll be taking screenshots of the window you're hovering over instead of a selected area.
cmd + shift + 5 is a screenshot tool I've never used.
cmd + shit + v is paste as plain text
cmd + x/c ; cmd + v -- you know these :)
So many more ... that I only remember when I need to execute a task.
Apps: I use Jiggler to always be green in whatever chat application my management expects me to use.
Ctrl shit 5 also does a screen recorder, which I use at work constantly!
Oh this is great. Usually I boot up QuickTime Player to do this but this is way faster
For advanced screen recording I also suggest Screen Studio! It does smooth automatic zooms when you click, and mouse movement looks great. It’s indispensable for me.
That said: it’s paid, the price has increased recently, and it’s become a bit more buggy as time has gone on. I’d only recommend if you’re a heavy screen recorder who needs to share them with others.
First thing I always install is MiddleClick which lets you use three fingers to get a middle mouse (scroll wheel) click like on Windows. It's super useful for web browsing because middle clicking a link opens it in a new tab, and middle clicking a tab closes it.
Lots of applications have logic for middle click, but you have to install an app to get the functionality with three finger tap on Mac.
Just so you’re aware, your two mentions of Command + ‘ got interpreted as a code block.
Windows has a lot of these same shortcuts too:
Ctrl + L (or Alt+D) in browsers jumps to the address bar
Ctrl + PageUp/Down usually moves between tabs (or Ctrl + Tab and Ctrl + Shift + Tab)
Ctrl + Numbers typically jumps to a specific tab, depending on the application. Similarly, Win+Numbers will activate the corresponding taskbar button, I use this constantly to get to my browser in spot 1 with Win+1, slack in slot 2, outlook in slot 3, etc
For screenshots, you can turn on an accessibility setting which maps the PrintScr key to start a capture. By default it lets you select a rectangle to capture but you can switch it to a window, full screen, or even freeform.
I will say though that the times I've used macOS, the keyboard shortcuts felt more integrated into the OS. Like on Windows it's mainly up to the applications themselves to implement things (like Ctrl + Shift + V to paste as plain text works in some apps but not all) but macOS felt more consistent. It was also nice in the terminal having the copy/paste shortcuts use Cmd since that avoids conflicts with things like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V and doesn't require remembering a different shortcut for copy/paste.
I believe that this is a side effect of the OS’ emphasis on the menubar, which it’s had since the original 80s Macs (and was shared by NeXTSTEP). Every app has one since it’s a system fixture, whereas on Windows even in the 90s a lot of simpler apps wouldn’t include one, and in the past decade apps have been removing menubars for design reasons.
It might also be related to Windows’ heritage in DOS, which was barely even an OS and had no opinion whatsoever on the design of programs with UIs and so everybody (including Microsoft) went in various different directions with their UI designs.
Easily one of my top peeves with Linux. It’s a nothingburger for long time Linux users but it’s super weird for me when the one set of shortcuts that’s consistent across practically everything (and has been for decades) doesn’t apply in one specific circumstance. That feeling of your muscle memory crashing into a brick wall is like nails on a chalkboard.
There are ways to fix it (like Kinto) but it’s yet another reason why I wish there were a thoroughly Mac-like Linux desktop environment that included meta-oriented key shortcuts.
To add to this, in a huge user of multiple desktops (usually one or two apps per desktop): three fingers up will expand to show you all windows on a desktop and all desktops (click to select one, click and drag to rearrange) or you can use three fingers left and right to switch adjacent desktops or ctrl + [1234] switches to said desktop.
This works with full screen apps too (full screen soldering then swipe back) and helps keep things clean since Mac is awful at window mgmt out of the box.
Personally I always swap the cmd-shift-4 and cmd-shift-3 shortcuts (screenshot region to file and screenshot entire screen to file) shortcuts with their cmd-option-shift counterparts which instead go to clipboard as normally I need the screenshots right now and never again, so this avoids cluttering my desktop with screenshot files.
Funny. Didn't know you could do that. Holding control is native for me.
If you consider yourself a power user (or aspire to be one) in my opinion there is no utility more essential than BetterTouchTool. Don’t let the name fool you, it sounds like it’s just a trackpad driver or something, but it’s way more. It allows you to bind any trigger (gesture, keystroke, programmatic call, scheduled call, system event, etc.) to any action you can think of. It’s insanely configurable and opens the door to tons of behaviors that are impossible out of the box. It also includes window snapping and management features like Rectangle and Magnet, making those redundant if you use BTT.
A decade ago or so I started using it with a handful of trackpad gestures. I splurged on the $24 lifetime license and never looked back. That license is transferable to any future Mac btw, I’ve been using the same one since then and it’s an outrageous bargain. Today I’ve got a fully loaded automation suite with custom gestures in every app I use, including deep integration / orchestration with my emulators and VMs. Working with it has become second nature; I can’t use a Mac without it now. It’s literally the first thing I install on any new machine.
BTT tip: bind three finger click on the trackpad to opening links in a new tab.
That's still my primary reason for using the app lol.
TIL there's another app besides MiddleClick which I mentioned here.
The two-finger “tip tap” left and right gestures are the best way to navigate through browser tabs. Combine that with the three-finger double-tap to close a tab, and the four-finger double-tap to reopen a closed tab… chef’s kiss
For window management, there's rectangle which gives windows-like snapping regions as well as hotkeys. However, I'd suggest something first before you install it: when in rome, do as the romans do. Try window management the mac way first; that is, don't full screen anything, keep your windows free floating and rely on your spatial memory to remember where things are. It's surprising how a clutter of windows can be intuitive to you. It's like how your desk may look like a mess, but you know exactly where the pencils are.
But, if it still doesn't jive: rectangle.
For terminal emulators, I stick with iterm2. It works.
If you need better mouse configuration, steermouse.
For something more akin to windows alt-tab, you can try the aptly named AltTab app (foss) or Contexts (more features, but paid).
Make sure to take advantage of the default apps as well. That's one of the benefits of macOS. It's nice that preview is a good PDF reader, and you don't have to pay for acrobat or install some ad-infested free alternative like on windows.
I full screen (almost) everything and use the desktop swapping, personally.
I could see this working on a smaller laptop but fullscreen everything would drive me mad on desktop monitors.
Absolutely. This gets me every time I have a full screen app on a monitor and want to drag another app over to that same monitor. It doesn't fail intuitively and instead the window you're dragging will just stop in it's tracks at the border. So you have to know to switch the desktop off of the full screen app first before you drag another window over to that monitor.
My daughter does this as well. I usually try to say "to each their own", which has taken over in my lexicon from "burn the heretic".
I was with you, clinging desperately to the old ways. Then I got a Magic Trackpad and four finger shuffle my way to victory with a collection of full screen applications.
Don't get me wrong - I use a lot of desktops. But I don't full screen everything and switch. Some things yes - my terminal gets one, and usually my IDE - but not everything. Everything seems like madness!
I posted above, but this is my way too. So clean
For window snapping, MacOS has natively built-in (sherlocked) Rectangle’s functionality since Sequoia in 2024.
Great point on spacial memory and dragging, every time I use Windows the limited support for drag and drop (in many contexts) fundamentally changes how I lay out windows.
I've used a Macbook as my primary computer for 14 years, and I personally tend to have the windows overlap a bit. I keep browser windows slightly shorter so I can have the "main" one at the top and a secondary one slightly lower and to the left, leaving space to easily click onto whichever one is on the bottom. Word docs would be full height, so I could always click on it to bring it to the front.
Funnily enough, I find the snapping function annoying on Windows since I'm so used to layering windows like that. Having windows that aren't full-size and can be moved around feels a lot more natural on Mac than Windows.
The thing I find most annoying about Windows’ snapping behavior is how easily it’s triggered and how much visual noise is created from triggering it. It’s easy to accidentally trigger, especially when moving windows between screens.
The newish Mac implementation dodges this by delaying the trigger by something like a half second, which feels much better to me as an occaisional user.
I’ll echo the bit about window management. Compared to when I’m using Windows or some Linux desktop, I do very little window management under macOS.
Windows fall where they may at whatever size feels natural. On a rare occasion I’ll snap a couple side by side (which the the stock OS can do now), but otherwise don’t worry about feeling every pixel of screen space or forcing windows into a grid. The only real organization they have is being split between task-oriented virtual desktops.
Never did get the appeal of iTerm2, personally. It’s not bad but the stock Terminal does everything I need and doesn’t bug me to update it periodically.
The displays on mac laptops can be very pretty but save your eyes. I recommend installing Flux and then setting your "daytime" setting to 4800K. This puts less strain on your eyes whilst staring at it for hours and hours per day.
This is built in to macOS now as Night Shift! You can program a schedule, including "Sunrise to Sunset"
In Flux you can configure three different settings:
There doesn't appear to be a built-in way in macOS to replicate this with Night Shift.
Fair enough! I have always just set my Macs to use the warmest temp at sunset, so I haven't really needed a separate bedtime setting, but I understand why that would be useful!
I thought the project was discontinued and had to make do with redshift on linux. Thank you for the link! Made my otherwise crappy day into something worthwhile. o7
There's also Gammastep. I think it's a fork of Redshift?
I've used it on Linux/Wayland for years now. No complaints really. Here's my
config.ini, minus my latitude and longitude coordinates:Gammastep also has a few other features:
I think installing Alfred is game changer. If you are techy driven, Little Snitch worth every penny.
I switched to MacOS less than a year ago. The learning curve was about 2-3 weeks, but I was determined to like it. For Mac, I am only using trackpads. It makes the UI more intuitive for me, but everyone is different!
The biggest thing, as someone else mentioned, was learning new keystrokes and finding ways to do things efficiently on a laptop. The "Option" key's icon took me a while to figure out, but it really does indicate that it takes the keystroke on a different path. Learning that any app's settings can be opened with
Command + ,was vital for the first weeks because I was tweaking everything!Getting help
Opening things quickly:
Command + Spaceto open Spotlight and quickly open up apps/files/etc. is really handyMaking it easier to see what's open:
Deleting words/typing:
Command + deleteremoves a whole row, which is helpful but often excessing.Option + deleteto remove single words at a time (likeAlt + Backspaceon Windows)Fn + delete! You can also doFn + Option + deleteto remove words in the forward-feeding direction.Moving windows around
Settings > Desktop and Dock: "Double click a window's title bar to: FILL"so that double clicking a window makes it full screen. The Mac desktop is happy to have a bunch of weirdly sized windows. I usually want them full screen!Desktop and Dock: Hold Option key while dragging windows to tilegives you a little target box as you drag a window and hold the Option key and makes windows snapping easierDesktop and Dock: Drag windows to menu bar to fill screenallows you to just drag a window toward the top of the display to make it full screen. Just makes sense to me!Keyboard Shortcuts > Windows > Halves > Tile Left HalfI changed toOption + Command + Left(then similar for right). The reason is that I want to be able to tile windows with either hand and not need it to be a two-handed operation. This works on windows except for Safari, where it switches tabs?Keyboard Shortcuts > Windows > Halves > General > Fill >Option + Command + F` is an easier reach for me to get a window fullscreen if I'm not double clicking or dragging it.Other cool stuff (if you have an iPhone):
Import from iPhoneand it'll pull up a scanner and then automatically transfer it to your Mac.Opening Spotlight with
Command + Spaceis a key part of Mac workflows that's often missed by people migrating from Windows. It's also a lot more powerful than just a shortcut to open applications.Use it as a:
If you're tied into the whole Apple ecosystem with things like Contact and Calendar, you can also use Spotlight to search across those.
Swiping down on the trackpad with 3 fingers will also give you an overview of all the open windows for the active app.
I love Al Dente. It lets you set a maximum battery charge level. I keep mine at 80% to prolong the usable lifetime of the battery. A lot of what kills lithium battery chemistries is sitting at 100% charge for long periods of time.
MacOS (and iOS) already does that on its own these days though. It just builds a usage profile and will charge up to 100% when it thinks you'll need it.
My personal Mac basically lives on its charger and is always sitting at 80%, with a menu bar option to ask it to charge to 100%, and my work Mac tends to hit different targets depending on the time of day or day of the week, based on when I'm at my desk or going to meeting rooms.
In theory it does, but in practice, it is very hesitant to limit the battery. If you are docked almost all the time, you will get an experience like yours. For my use case, I am on battery almost all the time, but I almost never need 100% of the battery. With the default macOS optimizations, I would always charge to 100%, even though it isn’t necessary. I use aldenté to limit to 80%. However on my phone, which does have a very consistent daily charge routine, the default optimizations are plenty.
My habits are way too chaotic and unpredictable for any clever algorithms to pick up on (actually, I think it would also be true even if my Mac could literally read my mind at all times — I don’t even know when I’m going to need it charged or not!)
Also, my M3 MacBook Air already has completely outshone my previous MacBook’s battery life. It was a 2008 MacBook and was still using the same battery, but attempting to run a modern OS on 2008 hardware meant maximum fans and about 15 minutes of battery life unplugged. By comparison, I was sick a few months after I bought the M3 Air, and I think I got basically a full day of streaming TV shows before the low battery indicator popped up. This tells me that I definitely don’t need the full 100% capacity range available to me.
So if it would help this laptop last as long as the last one (about 15 years) then yeah a little widget to force a lower battery cap is well worth it in my books.
Can’t say I recommend it for anyone else though, and I’m definitely an outlier when it comes to usage habits.
A couple that I'll share:
Raycast - Which is a Spotlight replacement. I've found it faster, and it has a lot of customization options like shortcuts that you can configure
Prompt - A really nice SSH client / terminal app
+1 for raycast, I personally love the clipboard integration and calculator (it does unit conversions!)
Welcome to the dark side.
First of all, I will warn you, there IS a learning curve. This is a UI stack that evolved independently of Windows, and some things will be unintuitive coming from Windows. As @stu2b50 mentioned, the window management paradigm is different: it's not built around maximizing one window at a time, it's built around multiple windows being cluttered together for dragging and dropping things. And for when you want to absolutely focus on one app, like Visual Studio Code, windows go into a full-screen mode, which you can switch with your normal desktop using Ctrl + Left and Ctrl + Right, or swiping on your trackpad. I'm used to it now.
That, and macOS is a lot like most Linux desktop environments- it doesn't necessarily believe you should have every customization option in the GUI and will expect you to use the command-line if you really want to tune it to exactly how you like it in some case. So usually there's actually an option for something that's missing in the Settings app; just that you should add "terminal" to the end of your search.
Here are some of my favorite Mac tools:
Free
Paid
Some good alternatives to the paid ones are Stats instead of iStat Menus and gdu instead of DaisyDisk. If you don't like the terminal, try OmniDiskSweeper instead. All can be installed with Homebrew.
+1 for Stats. It is super helpful! I try to kick a little money to the devs every time it prompts (which is not that often).
Sorry, I forgot to mention RunCat as another great alternative. That's what I've been using over the past weeks. Just because it's fun :shrug:
Mac is the dark side? :-)
The dark side is where the heart is.
And my heart is anywhere you are.
Anywhere you are
is the dark side.
The Jedi use Linux. I've traded my soul to Tim Cook in exchange for marginally better stability.
By default, when you hold down a key, macOS will pop up a menu to select an accent, instead of just repeating the letter. You can disable this with terminal command
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false.Lots of good suggestions here! I have a few that I would consider mandatory, most of which have already been mentioned:
BetterTouchTool
Alfred
Swish
BetterDisplay
MacMouseFix
SoundSource
BlackHole
Bartender
I've had people try to convince me to try vanilla macOS for a while to get used to it. I lasted about 2 days - it is laughably terrible without using several programs to fix basic OS shortcomings.
Note that there are probably comparable open source versions of most of the things I listed, and that they are generally quite pricey. That being said, the alternatives I have tested weren't as good as the programs I mentioned. The high app prices probably also help sell apple hardware, as programs purchased through the app store can be shared with 6 family members. So.. buy someone in your family a MacBook to help justify the insane app prices, I guess.
with the three fingers for opening and closing tabs, where did you get that from? I've been on the same setup forever... and I thought I was special :)
For Bartender, you can ditch it and do the same with BetterTouchTool --- Named and Other Triggers > Doubleclick Main Menubar > Show / Hide Menu Bar Icons Left of BTT Icon. Move the BTT icon to the far right or whatever and you're made in the shade.
I have no idea where I got it from anymore. I think I was trying to separate 3 and 4 finger swipes in macOS settings, then started searching when I couldn't make it work. But it's also entirely possible I searched for macOS optimization tips then pulled it from a video!
this is proof we are in a lazy simulation. :) it’s the best gesture. i use a magic trackpad, too. i can’t imagine life without it.
Heh, for me it demonstrates the opposite. At least as far as many options go. I mainly used it to be able to more easily switch audio devices, adjust volume per application, etc. Things that are available on windows by default.
Granted, SoundSource adds a lot more and I am not sure how much of it leverages things in macOS that are fundamentally easier/better to access than on windows.
Can I ask what you fix with the MacMouseFix? I'm having an issue with like an acceleration when scrolling with a Windows mouse. It starts scrolling very quickly after I try to move down the page just a little bit
Interesting... Not really sure if it would help with that or not.
I think one of the main things it fixed was that I wanted natural touchpad scrolling and inverted mouse scrolling, which wasn't an OS option. There appear to be options for smoothness, speed, and precision, all of which sound like they might be helpful for your issue.
The other thing it added that I would consider mandatory for mouse usage is click+drag commands that can be used to emulate multi-touch trackpad gestures.
Gotcha okay thank you. There actually is all of that in the main mouse menu now. I inverted and changed some speed settings yesterday. I don't know if those are new.
AltTab helps me a lot to navigate between windows, having also come to MacOS with some 30 years as a Windows user. Even after 5 years of use, I would still constantly lose program windows without AltTab.
BetterTouchTool and Karabiner Elements have allowed me to make the touchpad and keyboard work the way I want them to. Largely little things that I use AutoHotkey for on Windows.
Spotlight (Command + Space) is wonderfully fast. I use it to launch apps and to do quick calculations and unit conversions and such.
I use the basic terminal with the Oh My Zsh framework. It's made things nicer.
Homebrew as a package manager works nicely. Postgres.app is a nicely straightforward way of running a Postgres installation, if you happen to need one for any reason.
I have turned off automatic updates, a setting which MacOS actually respects, unlike Windows. I do manual updates when I have the time and the energy.
Does Mac's
Command+Taband `Command+`` functionality not give you enough to find your windows and applications?Not really.
Command + backtickpresupposes that I know that I have a second window open for some application, which is not always the case. With AltTab, I don't need to mentally keep track of what is open where as I always get the full picture of open windows through a layout that is structured and quick to navigate.I am also new to MacOS ! Left Windows behind for my desktop environment and using Linux on my laptop. Here is what I've found to be helpful so far :
BetterDisplay. Saved me a lot of headaches when I tried to deal with custom resolutions, non-Apple displays and color management. Has a ton of features and most of them are free.
Discrete Scroll, which fixed the weird/laggy scroll of my Logitech mouse.
Crossover, is basically a friendly interface and wrapper for wine, very useful for running Windows only software or games.
Bartender 5 is a paid app which helps clean up the menu bar. Unlike Windows, where you can hide tray icons, can't do that in Mac, natively. So to me, it's pretty important to have. Especially if you have a lot of background apps.
Another that I have because it's not native in MacOS is SoundSource, which in another paid app. In Windows, you can direct audio to different outputs, through Windows sound settings. Because some programs don't have those options built-in. Maybe I want a YouTube video to play through my speakers, but I want game I'm playing with in-game voice to play through my headset. Or vice versa. MacOS doesn't have that. So SoundSource helps with that.
I also have OverSight, which is free, though I don't use it as much anymore. It just gives alerts/notifications if the camera and mic are activated. The idea is that in that if the camera/mic are activated by malware, you'll get notified. I think Macs actually have hardware-level stuff that detects camera/mic usage. But maybe you don't notice the green light for the camera or the on-screen video/mic icons. But OverSight won't ever let you forget.
I totally forgot I had this: Rocket. Basically just makes it easier to use emojis. MacOS has CMD+CTRL+Space or Fn/Globe+E combos to bring up the Character Viewer to pick emojis. But I find it kinda clunky, at least compared to Windows' emoji picker. So Rocket allows you to type something in like
:rocketto quickly search and bring up the 🚀 emoji, or:catto bring up the selection of 🐈😸😹 emojis. It's free, but you get more emojis if you pay.For SSH, I recently came across Termius. Obviously you can use built-in Terminal to SSH, but Termius can save server passwords and keys and such. They have a free version which works pretty well for me, but there is a paid subscription for more options. I don't know what those features are.
Just so you're aware, some time a year or two ago Bartender changed owners and silently started phoning home. There was some discussion of it here as well as on HN and Reddit. May be worth seeking an alternative.
Ahh man...That's disappointing. Just seen some of the criticisms and questioning. At least it looks like there are some decent alternatives to Bartender. Free ones, even. Appreciate the heads up!
I'd recommend Ice as a drop-in replacement
if you use BetterTouchTool, you can ditch Bartender and have a double click on the menubar to toggle. I switched a few years ago and... well, the experience is the same. :)
Map the Mission Control function to a mouse button. Massively improved my ability to switch between windows.
A clipboard manager. Not Mac specific but it’s nice to be able to grab anything from my clipboard history.
I did not like any of the dock replacements and windows task bar like solutions out there. The Mac Dock does some funky stuff that third parties can’t mod effectively around. Multi-monitor SETI’s further complicate things.
AltTab is less useful than windows alt tab because Mission Control is more fluid. However it will make it easier to find windows that have gone totally missing or orphaned themselves in a different space.
Rectangle so that I can actually maximize windows. It also makes it easier to move windows across monitors and do 50/50 splits (or 66/33).
I have an iPad that I also sidecar with. Basically an additional monitor.
I've recently switched from using Linux full time since the mid '00s to now using my Mac Mini M4 on the daily. I paired it with a preowned M1 Air (great machine), an iPhone 14, and Air Pods Max.
So I'm comparing Mac OS X to KDE Plasma 6 mostly, as that was what I was using pre migration. Arguably Mac OS is more Gnome like than KDE. It's far enough from either to be a wrench though.
I use a Magic Trackpad with it now, due to hand pain.
I second Better Touch Tool, but I also use Better Display to help me control my external monitors, with input switching, etc. as I have quite the complex configuration of Display Port, HDMI things connected to two monitors.
I'm loving it so far. It's not presented me with anything insurmountable, and most things are smooth.
The hoops you have to jump through to run downloaded software (even to download the software) are repugnant though. I hate those the most.
Oh and doing
find ~ -print
In a terminal window caused so many popups. I'm not allowed to look around in my own files, apparently.
There are a lot of baby hand hold things that give me irritating frictions. The positives have outweighed them though
This is a switch I don’t read about often! Linux users I meet online are usually preaching how macOS sucks and Linux is the only right choice. Are you missing a lot that you were used to using on Linux? Any things you are especially happy with on macOS?
ETA:
That is definitely a PITA. You can flip the quarantine bit using the terminal too if that helps. I think you can also disable the whole quarantine thing entirely, but I’m not sure how.
I made heavy use of Synergy (input-leap etc. in its various forms) to remote control Windows machines from Linux. This worked really well under X11, and really, really badly under Wayland.
Wayland development is the most unhinged thing ever, and they're rapidly running away from X.org so I tested Synergy from my M1 Air which I had first (to remote support my dad's mac through mac native screen sharing - total game changer) and it worked totally perfectly.
Mac OS is UNIX after all so it wasn't so big a wrench. I have my CLI tools, and a nice desktop to use.
Passkeys work properly in my new ecosystem too, which is nice. I've actually started using them more, now that I have ecosystem lock in, er, integration :) (I still use keepass databases for all my credentials, but they're elevated to first class password and passkey stores [via Strongbox] on Mac OS).
So yeah, having proper support for that, and game streaming, and media streaming works at 4k now. There are some benefits for sure.
And the base M4 Mini is a good value. Especially now it has user upgradable storage and 16GB RAM, though for my storage needs, I have 4TB of NVMe thunderbolt hanging out the back. It's plenty fast.
I'm even considering replacing Bitwig with Logic.
Edit:
Nope. I still use Gimp and Libre Office and VS Code. That and web browsing is the majority of my use.
I've turned my old Linux desktop into a Steam Box for gaming, so now it boots directly into steam (I hand crafted this with my Arch installation), and I play using Sunshine/Moonlight from the Mac. Works great. And I can game with my Airpods with 0 latency.
I remote my PS5 with the PS5 app on Mac too (as opposed to Chiaki on Linux) , and get the same benefits.
I will go out of my way to use an open source or open platform app over a closed/proprietary one, even when the open source option is meaningfully worse. But. Logic is fantastic. It's just a really good piece of software. I think you probably will not be disappointed if you give it a shot!
You drank the Kool-Aid. In fact, you drank all of it!
Joking aside, that sounds great. I had no idea Wayland rollout was a disaster. Although I run some Linux servers, none of them run a desktop environment, so I’ve been blissfully ignorant.
I don't think the rollout is a disaster but their development process and closed mindset seems to inhibit user friendly development.
I got real used to using KDE Connect to integrate my Android with KDE.
In fact actually, the writing being on the wall for Graphene OS on Pixel phones (due to Google removing Pixel drivers from the public device tree) lead me to go to iPhone, because I don't want a Google device, and outside of Graphene, I figure iPhone is my next best bet.
The iPhone integration with Mac OS is hot stuff though, I must say. Highly impressive ecosystem integration they got going on here.
Oh god, don’t mention GrapheneOS. I’ve been in this whole Apple ecosystem for a long time. Last year I had to replace my MacBook Pro 2012. That laptop has been such a champ. I didn’t want to upgrade earlier because of the butterfly keyboards and stupid touch bar. But the poor thing had to be put down, so I got myself a MacBook Air M3. I had looked at Framework laptops, but worried it would be a disappointment.
The laptop is amazing. It really is. But the fact RAM and SSD can’t be upgraded is unforgivable. This feels like it will be my last MacBook.
And to replace the iPhone I had started investigating GrapheneOS. It sounded like a perfect fit: to have an OS without Google! But now I’m back at square one.
I wouldn’t be surprised if soldered RAM becomes the norm, with socketed becoming something seen only in boutique laptops and maybe workstation/gaming laptops, especially if the trend towards APU-like CPUs with beefy iGPUs continues. Soldered/on-package memory has notable advantages in speed and efficiency, and in the case of APUs like the Ryzen AI Max, distance from the CPU becomes a problem for signal integrity.
The efficiency hit is actually one of the reasons why the Framework 13 doesn’t get great battery life compared to MacBooks or other laptops with similar x86 hardware.
There’s no technical impetus for soldered storage, though, so that’ll probably remain upgradable.
I heard maybe graphene would release their own device or something but I fear the writing on the walls without pixel support. I didn’t want to have to move in an emergency so I switched my entire ecosystem over, lol. I’m lucky that I can afford to do this, and I guess I’m stuck here now :)
My biggest pain-point after using Linux CLI servers for years before Mac was getting used to being able to throw command-line flags wherever I wanted. Mac is a lot more picky. Example:
grep word file.txt -A 5works on Linux to searchwordinfile.txtand print the 5 lines after the match. Mac doesn't allow that on ordering a lot of commands! But they can be aliased to gnuutils.I've also struggled with how the Mac terminal interacts with the command/option/control keys. But eventually I sort of just figured it out.
I've been using AIX, Solaris, HP-UX for years before using Linux at home (and some Solaris actually and HP-UX), so I avoided GNU-isms in my shell work so I could have scripts which were universally deployable, so I never really noticed the difference on Mac CLI :)
I run into the same thing often, and it’s very annoying.
A coworker of mine was using the fish shell on his Mac and it looked really interesting. I haven’t gotten around to testing it, but maybe it’s something you’d enjoy.
I think Linux users are generally more receptive to MacOS than they would be to Windows. MacOS is based on Unix (simplification, don't let the BSD people hear) and as a result it shares a lot in common with Linux in the technical backend, whereas Windows is off just doing its own thing most of the time. MacOS is much more locked down than Windows of course, but if you have to use one or the other then MacOS is probably better for just getting work done. It's a surprisingly good ecosystem for software development, actually.
Anecdotally, a lot of Linux people I've spoken to seem to have a frothing hatred for Microsoft, and a mere passing hatred for Apple, so take from that what you will. I think Apple are generally happy to stay in their own lane, you buy their overpriced stuff, no you can't run that application that's worked flawlessly for 10 years after the new firmware update because you need to wait until the 75-year old maintainer hits the "works on the new update" button, you'll use the tools they provided in your fancy box, you'll buy another box in three years, and you'll be happy. Microsoft are a bit more insidious in their approach, constantly trying to subvert the user and hope they don't notice when the random security update accidentally reinstalls Gemini and flicks a privacy setting you've turned off five times already back on. And at the end of the day the product still ends up being shit. I mean, advertisements built into the OS alone is fucking insane. At least MacOS does the things it says it will do. Not to mention Microsoft's history of repeatedly trying to kill FOSS and Linux specifically over the years, which paints their more recent adoption of Linux via WSL in a less pure light IMO. Sorta feels like they're trying to make using GNU/Linux unnecessary because hey, Windows has Linux built in now!
Personally I use all three of them (as a non-programmer). I started out on Windows, grew tired of all the privacy invasion and the OS treating you like an idiot, and I started dual-booting Arch Linux. I still need to use Windows for some work stuff but most stuff that I do is on Arch these days. Along with my desktop I also own a second-hand Macbook Air, which acts as a fairly happy medium between Windows and Linux, having all the applications I need from Windows along with a lot of the technical vocabulary of Linux. The main thing for me is Emacs, which runs excellently on Linux, pretty well on MacOS, and is nearly unusable on Windows even with WSL/2.
macOS works very differently to Windows so I'd definitely try using the base system first and then see what annoys you most. There have been plenty of Windows->Mac converts over the years and people have built countless utilities to address these annoyances. You'll definitely find many of those utilities in this thread, these are the ones that are essential to me:
Rectangle - a window management tool. It has window snapping (which is now built-in to macOS) but I also like that it has other options for snapping windows to 2/3rds of your screen for example. The next app in this list can also do it but Rectangle has a convenient menu in the menu bar that can do it graphically without any typing.
Raycast - A collection of productivity tools all within a macOS spotlight type UI. Some raycast features are being built into the next version of macOS, macOS Tahoe, but Raycast remains incredibly powerful. I love the snippets feature to for frequently typed text, the clipboard history, and quick links. It's also super extensible and can connect to a bunch of other services and programs. It's also got window management utilities built in that accomplish much of what Rectangle can do but I've got muscle memory now for Rectangle haha.
Alt-Tab. macOS does have the built-in shortcut of cmd+tab but that just switches between programs. The macOS way to switch windows is to go into Mission Control (F3 key on Mac keyboards). However, I really prefer having that carousel of windows to pick from so Alt-Tab gives you that.
I mapped all the keyboard commands I used for window management in Rectangle to Raycast, now I don't need Rectangle at all but still to benefit from muscle memory :)
You know, I feel kind of dumb for not realizing this is even possible. That's so smart. I think I still need to figure out how I'd move windows to the weird locations (like first 2/3rds of screen) but it should all be possible. Thanks for the suggestion!
Control + Option + S :p
It's one of the defaults that I mapped from rectangle along with D, F & G for vertical thirds, which I use a lot, and then custom 1 -> 6 for each of the sixths which I also use a lot. More options here:
https://manual.raycast.com/window-management
I really like Yoink and use it daily. It's a little shelf that appears at the side of the screen when you start dragging something. You can drag and drop anything onto the shelf, then go about your business and later drag it off of the shelf into a folder, app, whatever. I use it all the time when I take screenshots. They appear in the corner for a few seconds right after taking them, before they save to disk. During those seconds, I drag them onto the shelf, then later into Discord or Teams or whatever. That both makes them easy to access but also doesn't save them to disk, reducing clutter.
https://eternalstorms.at/yoink/mac/
I can't live without a tiling window manager, personally. https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/
basically, use iterm2 and install ffmpeg, yt-dlp, imagemagick and you're set. I try to do as much with a CLI as possible instead of getting apps for simple things like conversions
I also remapped capslock to hyper using karabiner and use that for my yabai and alfred triggers.
Have you tried Aerospace? I went with it instead of Yabai and so far am quite happy with it:
https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace
oh nice. good to have another option. i wish we could just have i3 directly :)
You can remap the modifier keys directly in system settings, so no need for karabiner.
can you map it for HYPER, though?
I think so? I am away from my Mac, so I can’t check, but I am pretty sure you can remap all modifier keys and caps lock to any other modifier key.
On my personal mac I’m seeing settings for remapping Caps Lock, Control, Option (alt), Command (meta), and Globe (language switcher). Maybe Globe counts as hyper? I don’t think that hyper is a key that most keyboards have.
I'd be surprised. Most systems don't have hyper, as its a combination of cmd+opt+ctrl+shift --- every keyboard should have it, though. Its so nice to have an extra layer.
I've been using the paid version of Shottr for a couple years and am really satisfied with it. It's a screenshot power tool that I've mainly been using for OCR, scrolling screenshots, annotation and text redaction. I don't have much to say apart from it's fast and gets out of my way when needed, which is what I need in a screenshot utility.
Another small tool is Hand Mirror which is a quick access button to your webcam from the menu bar. For some reason Photo Booth's output quality is really grainy compared to this tool, and it's the closest preview to what others would see when you hop on a video call.
Lastly, FreeScaler is an open source tool that is an AI upscaler for low-res images. It runs locally and saves me from uploading images to some random website.
Edit: Bonus Round! Can you believe that it is 2025 and macOS still doesn't switch the scroll direction when connecting a mouse? The open source utility aptly named Scroll Reverser fixes this. While you're at it please do yourself a favour and turn off the pointer acceleration by default in System Settings, it will make using the mouse much more pleasant to use.
A lot of my tools are multi-platform, so I use them on both Windows and macOS.
As for my window management practices, I'll have a desktop with floating windows, apps that need more space like a fully multiplexed terminal get their own desktops. Swipe around from desktop to desktop, swipe up to separate all the windows. I tried Stage Manager for a couple days and didn't fully hate it, but you give up a lot (too much for me) desktop real estate for it.
I second getting the hang of keyboard shortcuts (especially Spotlight) and trackpad gestures. I use a Logitech Master mouse and I mapped some of the trackpad gestures to the thumb button. My mouse as another option for those gestures is amazing.
I've been trying out Shortcuts lately for simple tasks, rather than installing an app or package.
One of my most used Shortcuts is for capturing text with OCR and then saving it to my clipboard, this is great when someone sends a screenshot of something and I don't want to type it out. I also set it to use the keyboard shortcut of
⌘ + Shift + 7as it opens the same cropping tool that taking a screenshot with⌘ + Shift + 4does.Speaking of screenshots, the first thing I always do when I get a new mac is reset the default folder for screenshots to be for a folder in my home directory
~/Pictures/Screenshotsas I prefer not cluttering up my desktop with them.Here's a link if you want to try out the OCR shortcut:
OCR Shortcut
Welcome to the Church of the Bitten Fruit. If you're doing technical work, I hope you will enjoy the significant speed bump compared to the other side.
Feel free to look at a previous thread I created that asked the same thing ; you'll find similar recommendations.
Nonetheless, where's some of my suggestions :
What madness is this? Dock on the left? You need help, my friend. Sane people have their dock on the right :P
With the dock on the left and an app that also does stuff on the side (vscode, or a Web browser with the tab on the side), you'll have a nice hierarchy of content (app>context>data).
With the dock on the right it looks like the american date format.
OOF! Chapeau @PetitPrince. :)
I fell deeply in love with Afterstep as a window manager for x, so got used to it being on the right. Anything else feels completely alien to me.
Thanks for the tips. I actually turned on Stage Manager as a recommendation from someone, and I like it so far.
I no longer use a mac device. But, I used to have a macbook until two years ago for work. For me, the biggest annoyance is macOS window management. Although since I last used it some things seem to have improved, apparantly a tool like rectangle (Windows inspired window management) is less necessary although it is my understanding that it still improves the macOS implementation.
Some other utilities I really liked are:
Maccy is the app I cannot live without! It's a clipboard manager that comes with a searchable clipboard history.
In my job, I'm constantly copying a screenshot or link or message, and I rely on Maccy to keep everything handy. Windows comes with clipboard history via
Windows+Vwhich I really missed on Mac until I installed Maccy.FSNotes for super fast plain text and markdown notes. Search bar at the top also serves as a quick way to make a new note. It replaced notational velocity / nvalt for me. It's open source, works offline, syncs between MacOS and iOS (via iCloud), and it's a one-time purchase ($9 for Mac and $5 for iOS), not a subscription. Pricing is very reasonable IMO. Notes can be organized with tags and links, and there's also a quick way to share a note online (one click to create a webpage) if you want to.
Craft is what I use when I need presentable notes or documents that I can quickly share and edit anytime. I actually used this for my online wedding invitation! Syncs between iOS and MacOS, works offline, and it's easy for me to update using my phone anytime. So even if I know how to make webpages the old school way (HTML/CSS/PHP and upload via FTP) I just use Craft whenever I need a quick webpage; being able to instantly edit on my phone is so convenient. I also use this regularly as an online invitation for when we host get-togethers at home-- it's a quick link to show party details, map and directions, menu, etc. The free tier is already very useful; the subscription is for extra things like having a custom domain. I was on the free tier for the longest time and then I availed of the lifetime 40% off subscription offer during a past Black Friday sale. (I'm currently on a yearly $48 subscription.) I think this is kinda similar to Notion but I just prefer how Craft works better even while offline.
New File Menu because even though I haven't been a Windows user in decades, I still miss being able to right-click anywhere in a folder and create a new file (specifically text files). I use this $2 app to do that on my Mac. (I'm sure there's a way to do it for free / program it yourself if you're so inclined, but I was happy to just pay $2 for this app to do it for me.)
A thing I haven't seen mentioned is the active corners. Do they still exist? Having mission control set to the bottom left corner is the first thing I do (note that I'm a mouse person. with trackpads there's gestures)
Still a thing. I have mission control as top right. Desktop is bottom left, app windows top left.
Give Stage Manager a try! You can find it in Settings > Desktop & Dock. It's a very different workflow, and I don't even use it all the time, but it has its times to shine.
When you fire it up, it collapses each app into its own collection in a strip on the side of your screen. From there, you can drag windows from each app into collections together, and when you Cmd+Tab to an application from a different collection, it'll activate that collection. Only the active collection's windows appear on your screen, and the rest return to the strip. So I can have one desktop with a collection for creating graphical assets, a collection for optimizing assets, and one desktop with collections for authoring/building and previewing the final result.
It's kind of like having separate desktops within your desktops.
I'm not certain WRT MacOS but the beta for iPadOS 26 has killed Stage Manager entirely in favour of a much improved multitasking option. I will be installing the MacOS beta in the next couple of days, so I'll report back.