This App Brings Some of My Favorite Windows Features to Mac

As someone who regularly switches between the Mac and PC, I really can't live without the PowerToys app on Windows. It adds little missing features that I really like on the Mac, like a Spotlight Search alternative, auto dark mode, screen awake, on-screen OCR (which lets you pull text from images), and more.

But the reverse is also true. When I'm on MacOS, I start to miss the little features and commands that I've been used to Windows having for decades now (I started using Windows in school, but was only exposed to macOS when I was in college).

It's the little things, like not being able to cut and paste files in Finder. And why must I accidentally open the Music app every time I press the play button? This is just the beginning.

Enter Supercharge, a utility from prolific indie developer Sindre Sorhus. Think of it not as a single app, but as a Swiss army knife for your menu bar—a collection of micro-utilities designed to patch the specific usability holes that Apple has left open, many of which Microsoft has already plugged. The app offers an unlimited free trial (with a prompt to upgrade every 12 hours), or you can buy it outright for $18. It's also available as part of a Setapp subscription.

Credit: Supercharge

The best Supercharge tweaks that you should enable

The Supercharge app works in two ways. The first is by giving you a set-and-forget settings menu. Secondly, it adds a menu bar app where you can quickly access small features on the fly.

The tweaks part, to me, is a lot more interesting. Once the app is installed, open the menu bar app and go to Settings. Go to the Tweaks tab and take some time to customize your Mac's behavior.

Make Finder work more like Windows File Explorer

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The Finder is where Supercharge shines, fixing legacy behaviors that have frustrated Windows switchers for years. The first thing I enabled was the "Cut and Paste" functionality. Finally, you can use Cmd+X to cut a file and Cmd+V to move it, eliminating the awkward Cmd+C followed by Cmd+Option+V dance required by default.

Beyond moving files, the app allows you to enable the Option+N shortcut to instantly create a new text file in your current folder—another Windows muscle memory I've had for decades. Additional tweaks include toggling the Enter key to open a file instead of renaming it, and an option to show hidden files by default.

Mission Control features

Apple's Mission Control provides a bird's-eye view of all your windows, but it's hardly interactive. Supercharge changes that by adding window management buttons directly to the overlay. You can now add dedicated Close, Minimize, and Quit buttons for every window inside Mission Control, helping you clear cluttered app windows in seconds, and in a fairly visual way.

Dock enhancements

Supercharge also brings much-needed flexibility to the Dock, making it more like the taskbar on Windows or Linux. Enable the Click-to-Hide feature, and you can minimize or hide an app simply by clicking on the app icon. My favorite, though, is the option to open folders directly in the Finder from the Dock. You can also set Supercharge to add spacers to the Dock, and quit apps using the middle-click mouse button.

The Apple Music app fix

Perhaps the most useful fix in the entire suite is the ability to stop Apple Music from launching automatically. This feature stops the app from popping up when you press Play on your keyboard or Bluetooth headphones. If you are a dedicated Spotify user or simply dislike it when your headphones accidentally wake up Apple Music, this feature alone makes a Supercharge installation worth it.

Other useful features

The Supercharge app includes several other quality-of-life improvements. The Notification Nuke feature allows you to set a global hotkey to instantly clear all notifications from Notification Center, acting as a panic button for focus. To prevent accidents, you can also enable Accidental Quit Prevention, which requires a double-press or a Shift + Cmd + Q combo to actually quit an application.

Add these features to the Supercharge menu bar app

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The second part of the equation here is the menu bar app. Here, you can add small missing features that usually require downloading separate apps. There are more than two dozen options. Go to Settings > General > Show Menu Items to see the whole list.

Here, you can add options to quickly capture and copy any text from an image (or translate it). There are one-click options for hiding all windows, showing the desktop, quitting all apps except the current one, clearing all notifications, and more. There's also a simple Keep Awake feature that will keep your Mac active even when the screen is off.

And there's also a simple default browser switcher built-in, though I prefer using Sindre's dedicated Default Browser app.

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