This App Brings Some of My Favorite Windows Features to Mac
As someone who regularly switches between Mac and PC, I really can’t live without the PowerToys app on Windows. It adds little missing features that I really like on Mac, like a Spotlight search alternative, auto dark mode, screen wake, on-screen OCR (which lets you extract text from images), and more.
But the opposite is also true. When I’m on macOS, I miss the little features and commands that I’ve been accustomed to in Windows for decades now (I started using Windows in school, but wasn’t exposed to macOS until I was in college).
It’s little things, like not being able to cut and paste files in Finder. And why do 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 set of micro-utilities designed to fill specific usability gaps that Apple has left open, many of which Microsoft has already filled. The app offers an unlimited free trial (with an upgrade prompt every 12 hours), or you can purchase it outright for $18. It is also available as part of a Setapp subscription.
Credit: Overload
The Best Supercharge Settings You Should Enable
The Supercharge app works in two ways. The first is to provide you with a set-it-and-forget-it settings menu. Second, it adds a menu bar app where you can quickly access small features on the fly.
The adjustments part, for me, is much more interesting. Once the app is installed, open the app from the menu bar 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 users for years. The first thing I enabled was the “Cut and Paste” feature. 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 lets you activate 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 adjustments 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 an overview of all your windows, but it’s hardly interactive. Supercharge changes this by adding window management buttons directly to the overlay. You can now add dedicated Close, Minimize, and Exit buttons for each Mission Control window, helping you clean up cluttered application windows in seconds and quite visually.
Dock Improvements
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 just by clicking the app icon. My favorite, however, is the option to open folders directly in Finder from the Dock. You can also configure Supercharge to add spacers to the Dock and exit applications using the middle mouse button.
What do you think of it so far?
The Apple Music app fix
Perhaps the most useful fix in the entire suite is the ability to prevent Apple Music from automatically launching. This feature prevents the app from displaying when you press Play on your keyboard or Bluetooth headphones. If you’re a dedicated Spotify user or just don’t like your headphones accidentally waking up Apple Music, this feature alone is worth it.
Other useful features
The Supercharge app includes several other quality of life improvements. The Notification Nuke feature lets you set a global keyboard shortcut to instantly clear all Notification Center notifications, acting like a panic button to keep you focused. To avoid accidents, you can also enable accidental quit prevention, which requires a double tap or a Shift + Cmd + Q combination to actually exit an app.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
The second part of the equation here is the menu bar application. 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 entire list.
Here you can add options to quickly capture and copy any text from an image (or translate it). There are one-click options to hide all windows, show desktop, quit all apps except the current one, clear 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, although I prefer to use Sindre’s dedicated default browser app.
