As my 2018 MacBook Pro had became increasingly, intolerably slow (and loud too — especially after I replaced my 1440p monitor to a 2160p one — it’s so slow I had to give up using Chrome), I tried making a switch back to use my workstation grade desktop computer I treated only as my personal computer before, and use it as my work machine.

I tried the switch at least half a dozen times since early 2020, but all of the attempts failed after maybe 1, or 2 days — because of the small things, here and there.

One night last week, after finishing work at home, I stare at my MacBook, which, while under minimal load (Firefox with a few tabs, Slack, Spotify, Franz), has its fans spinning at full blast, r̵e̵a̵d̵y̵ ̵t̵o̵ ̵t̵a̵k̵e̵ ̵o̵f̵f̵ trying to save itself from overheating. That moment, plus the random spinning wheels I saw each day when I do something slightly more taxing on it, helped me made up my mind — I am going to switch back to Windows, for real. (I mean, the M1 Macs do sound very nice, but I am not in the mood of being lab rats for Apple’s first gen products, so maybe next year?)

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Anyway, here is a list of apps that I found quite useful to me switching back to work on Windows

Disclaimer: I had been a multi-platform user for a long time now: I used Mac for work, my gaming rig and HTPC are on Windows, I have a make-shift home server / NAS running on Linux. So these are far from everything I use on Windows at work, but just things I thought I would have to give up by not using MacOS.

1. kSnip — MacOS Preview alternative

For Image / Screenshot annotation: https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip/releases

One thing that MacOS does better than all other OS is its “Preview” app, it’s simple and… it just works™.

The “spacebar” to preview (this is supported by Windows via QuickLook) and the ability to open many files makes MacOS a good tool for work on its own.

As a project manager, I need to communicate with a lot of people everyday, and sometimes, an annotated picture is worth a thousand words.

There are many image editing tools on Windows, but one that worked like Mac’s Preview — simple non-flattened shape drawing, tools hotkey, are something I couldn’t find before (iPhotoDraw was a very close one, but kSnip simply works).

2. PowerToys Run — Alfred Alternative

For launching app, quick calculation and search: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases

If you had been using Mac, you had probably used Alfred and it is an app that needs introduction to many Mac users.

PowerToys Run let me do most of the things I do with Alfred — launch apps (Windows search is also pretty good, but I am used to a more “inline” solution that allows me to keep my focus on the center of the screen.), making quick calculation and copying the result without opening the Calculator.

PowerToys is a set of opensource utilities provided by Microsoft, and Run is one of them.

Its file search capability is a bit embarrassing though, but on Windows, you have “Everything Search” which is, in my opinion, even better than MacOS’s spotlight / Alfred / Windows search.

3. MacType — for our spoiled eyes

MacOS is well known for its aesthetics — Windows 10 looks significantly better than its predecessors, but when it comes to fonts, MacOS is still the golden standard in my opinion.

MacType helps a little by applying Mac-like fonts to Windows at a system level.

If you are not comfortable allowing programs to touch something at a lower level, this might not be for you, though.

4. PowerToys — Keyboard manager (Alternative to Karabiner / BetterTouchTool)

Another useful tools from the PowerToys toolbox — Keyboard manager let you assign / swap keys / hotkeys for pretty much everything.

It doesn’t support configuration profile importing or triggering custom script like BetterTouchTool, but you can always use AutoHotkey for the latter.

5. ShareX — QuickTime alternative

On MacOS, I use the QuickTime mostly for screen recording. Again, it’s something that comes with the MacOS and simply works out of the box.

On Windows, there are many screen recorder option, ShareX is the best one I found so far (that’s opensource and free)

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Honorable mentions:

Like I said, I use many tools on Windows for personal computing and work, the 5 I talked about are just the things I thought I have to give up when switching back to Windows. Here is a quick list of very useful tools I recommend for different occasions.

1. Everything — instantaneous file search that works like Magic, compared to the slow Windows search.
2. Sublime text — “the text editor”
3. AutoHotKey — Define your own hotkeys and more.
4. GreenShot — This is how the print screen should’ve worked
5. Geek uninstaller — Like Windows own application uninstaller, but better.
6. Drawboard — PDF viewing and annotation
7. Windows Terminal — A beautiful and very handy terminal for running commands and scripts, supports command prompt, PowerShell and more.
8. Duplicati — opensource system backup and restore solution