7 Apps to Get the Best Mac Features on Windows

Some of macOS’s features are so good, they’re now legendary. The Mac pioneered fast, local search using Spotlight. You can press the spacebar on any file to instantly preview it with Quick Look. The same goes for the Dock, and the ability to easily AirDrop anything between Macs or other Apple devices.

If you recently moved from Mac to Windows, you’re going to miss these features and more. Even long-term Windows users can appreciate how good these default Mac options are. As such, quite a few enterprising Windows developers have created tools that integrate these macOS features into the Windows environment, while making them feel right at home on a PC.

Preview files using QuickLook

If you miss previewing files with the spacebar, install the free QuickLook app on your PC. Just like on the Mac, QuickLook will work for previewing all files and folders, including media. When you’re viewing videos or playing music, you can use the mouse wheel to adjust the volume.

And yes, this works with PDFs, so there’s finally a quick way to go through a PDF on Windows without launching a dedicated app. When you’re previewing a file, you’ll also find options to open the sharing pane, and for opening the file in the default app.

Search your PC fast using the Everything app

Jason Fitzpatrick over at How-To Geek says he can’t imagine using Windows without the Everything app, which holds up, as he’s used the app since it came out back in the days of Windows XP. While Windows has a great Start menu, the Search feature has always been lacklustre, and seems like Windows doesn’t want to prioritise on-device search. The Everything app fixes this issue.

It’s a basic-looking app that can quickly crawl through and categorise all the files in your storage drives. Then, you can use the app to search through even the smallest files. If you’re having trouble finding something long forgotten, the advanced filters will help.

Flow Launcher replicates Spotlight search

The Everything app is great for quickly searching through files, but it’s no Spotlight search. If you’re looking for something like Spotlight (or Alfred), try out the Flow Launcher. It’s free, open-source, and has a great array of community plugins.

Flow Launcher is a keyboard launcher that looks like Spotlight, if it was designed using the Fluent design language. Use Alt+Space to bring up the launcher, then type out your query. You can use this shortcut to launch apps, search the web, find files, do calculations, run shell scripts, and more. And, of course, there’s a plug-in store to enhance the functionality even further.

SnipDo brings an iOS-style text highlight menu to Windows

This is more of an iPhone/iPad feature that works surprisingly well on Windows, especially once you make it customisable. After installing SnipDo, whenever you highlight text, you’ll see a floating menu above, with a bunch of icons and options.

By default, you can do things like copy text, paste, open folder, links, and so on. But the app has over 80 extensions that take this little feature to a whole new level. Using these extensions, you can quickly search for highlighted text on Amazon, add text to a note in Evernote, create a new Word document, and a lot more.

Get the same Mac screenshot shortcuts using ShareX

Lifehacker’s Pranay Parab has already crowned ShareX the best screenshot tool for Windows, but if that’s still not enough for you to start using it, this little feature will help: ShareX has the ability to remap screenshot shortcuts in the Hotkey Settings section of the app. Here, you can ditch the default options and switch to Control + Shift + 3 for capturing the entire screen, Control + Shift + 4 for capturing part of the screen, and Control + Shift + 5 for capturing the active window.

Get AirDrop-like wireless file sharing using SnapDrop

Now, SnapDrop is not a system app for Windows. Instead, it’s a website that uses local network sharing to give you an AirDrop-like experience. And because it’s a website, it will work for any device, making it easier to transfer photos and files wirelessly from iPhone and Android smartphones to your Windows PC.

Just fire up the website, and take note of the name of your device the website randomly generates. Open the website on your smartphone, choose your computer from the list, and then choose the files to send. On the PC side, you’ll have to manually accept the files by default (you can check an option that automates it the next time). Then, the files will be downloaded via your browser to your default save location.

Turn the Windows 11 taskbar into a dock using Taskbar XI

The taskbar customisation options in Windows 11 are woefully limited. That said, the fact that the Windows 11 taskbar is centered by default, and doesn’t open multiple instances of the same app like before, already brings it closer to how the Dock on macOS operates.

If you still miss the Dock, you can go one step further, and use Taskbar XI to basically turn the taskbar into a Dock. This will remove all the unnecessary stuff from the left and right of the taskbar, leaving only your apps at the bottom of the screen. There is, of course, a big downside to this: You lose out on the entire system tray, and the quick toggles menu on the right. But if you’re OK with that, your Windows 11 setup will look damn cool.