Switching to Mac
Control, Alt, Delete on a Mac: the Windows equivalents
Force Quit, Print Screen, right-click and the rest: where your Windows habits live on a Mac, and what to press instead.
By the Savvoo desk · · 15 min read
Something has frozen, and the key combination you have used for twenty years does nothing. That is usually the moment people go looking for this page.
The short answer is Command, Option and Escape. The longer answer is that about a dozen things moved, none of them are hidden, and your hands sort out most of it inside three days. This is the list, in the order you are likely to need it.
One thing to know before the list. Almost every shortcut on a Mac has a plain menu route, and the menus sit in a strip along the top of the screen rather than inside each window. If you cannot remember a key combination, and most people cannot, the menu bar is where you go looking. The shortcuts are printed next to the menu items, so it teaches you them as you use it.
A note on versions. Everything here was checked on macOS Tahoe. Apple puts out a new version every September and menus shift a little each time, so if a route here does not match what is on your screen, that is usually why. The menu bar is still where to go looking.
The short version
Control, Alt, Delete is Command, Option, Escape, and it is called Force Quit.
The red button closes the window and leaves the app running. Command and Q actually quits it.
Copy and paste moved one key over, from Control to Command.
There is no Start button. Search replaces it, and it is faster once you trust it.
There is no Print Screen key. There are three shortcuts instead, and one of them shows you all the options.
The Delete key only deletes backwards. Forward delete needs a modifier.
The green button does not maximize the window, it sends the app full screen.
Control, Alt, Delete is Force Quit
On Windows, when something stops responding you hit Control, Alt and Delete, and you get a screen with Task Manager on it.
The Mac's version is Force Quit. It is in the Apple menu in the top left corner, and the shortcut is Command, Option and Escape together. Either way you get a short list of what is running, you pick the one that has stopped responding, and you force it to quit.
Open it once now, while nothing is wrong, so you know where it is when something is.
The catch is that it replaces one job, not all of them. Windows folds several things into that shortcut. If what you want is the full list of what is running and what is draining your battery, that is Activity Monitor, which lives in the Utilities folder inside Applications. That is your Task Manager.
The red button does not close the app
On Windows the X in the corner closes the program. When the window is gone, the thing is gone.
On a Mac, clicking the red circle closes the window and leaves the program running. This one catches Windows people out for months. A few apps do quit when their last window closes, but most do not, and you cannot tell which is which by looking at them.
To actually quit, use Command and Q, or go to the app's own menu at the top left, next to the Apple logo, and choose Quit. You can also right-click its icon in the Dock and choose Quit.
The catch shows up later. If your Mac feels sluggish after a few weeks, this is usually why: fifteen things running that you thought you had closed.
Alt-Tab is Command-Tab, with one difference
On Windows you hold Alt and tap Tab to cycle through what is open, and every window is its own stop.
A Mac does the same thing with Command and Tab. Hold Command, tap Tab, and a row of open apps appears across the middle of the screen.
The difference is that it switches apps, not windows. Three documents open in the same app count as one stop on that row, which is not what your hands expect when you are trying to get back to the other spreadsheet.
Moving between windows inside the app you are already in is a separate shortcut, and it is on a key most people have never deliberately pressed. Hold Command and press the key directly above Tab, on the far left of the number row, marked with ` and ~. Add Shift to go back the other way. Nobody arrives at that key by guessing, which is most of why people think the feature does not exist.
If you would rather see everything at once than cycle through it, there is a view that spreads every open window out across the screen. It is Control and the up arrow from the keyboard, or a three finger swipe upwards on the trackpad.
Copy and paste moved one key over
Control C and Control V become Command C and Command V. Command and S saves. Your fingers will reach for Control for about two days.
Everything is also sitting in the Edit menu at the top if you would rather point at it, with the shortcuts printed alongside.
The catch is the key itself. Command is the key next to the space bar, where Alt sits on a Windows keyboard, so the muscle memory is close enough to be confusing rather than close enough to transfer.
The Start menu is a search box
On Windows you tap the Windows key and start typing, and the thing you wanted is the top result before you finish the word. Whether you think of that as the Start menu or as search does not much matter. It is one key, then letters.
A Mac does the same thing, and there is no button for it anywhere. Command and the space bar opens a box in the middle of the screen. Type the first few letters, press Return. Same interaction, different key, and it is how most Mac users open nearly everything.
It reaches further than the app list, the way Windows search does. On Tahoe it covers files, actions inside apps, shortcuts you have saved and your clipboard history, on top of the usual definitions and arithmetic.
If you would rather browse than type, there is a grid of everything installed, and getting to it is a second step rather than a place you go. Open the search box first with Command and the space bar, then either press Command and 1, or click the apps icon in the panel that just opened. Pressing Command and 1 on its own, from the desktop, does nothing at all. That is why people conclude the grid does not exist.
It has no permanent home either. There is no Start button, and on the Mac we checked this on there was no icon in the Dock for it. The grid is a state the screen goes into and then comes out of.
The catch is that it sorts itself. You can filter by category and switch between icons and a list, but you cannot drag your apps into an arrangement of your own. If you are the kind of person whose Start menu was laid out exactly so, that habit does not come with you.
Print Screen is a key on Windows and a shortcut on a Mac
On a Windows laptop there is a key marked Print Screen, and what it does depends on how the machine is set up. On some it copies the whole screen to the clipboard, ready to paste. On others it opens the Snipping Tool so you can pick the part you want. Across five Windows laptops in as many years, it did not do the same thing on all of them, and that is not a fault.
Saved screenshots usually land in a Screenshots folder inside Pictures. If OneDrive is backing up your Pictures folder, they go to the cloud as well. On those five laptops, every one ended up in OneDrive. Worth checking before you go looking for one on the laptop.
There is no Print Screen key on a Mac. There are three combinations instead.
Command, Shift and 3 takes the whole screen.
Command, Shift and 4 gives you crosshairs to drag around the part you want.
Command, Shift and 5 opens a small bar with every option on it, including screen recording.
Learn the third one and you can forget the other two, because it shows you the choices rather than asking you to remember which combination does what. Hold Control as well as any of the three and the shot goes to the clipboard instead of being saved, ready to paste straight into an email.
If you would rather point at something, it is an app, and it is called Screenshot. It sits in the Utilities folder inside Applications, and it comes up if you search for it by name.
The catch is where they land. They go to the desktop unless you change it, and you change it in the Options menu on that capture bar. The first screenshot most switchers take appears to do nothing at all, and the reason is almost always that it worked and went somewhere they were not looking.
Delete deletes the wrong way
On Windows, Backspace removes the character behind the cursor and Delete removes the one in front of it. Two keys, two jobs.
A Mac laptop keyboard has one key and it does the first job only. For the forward delete, hold the key marked fn, with a globe on it, in the bottom left corner of the keyboard, and press Delete. Control and D does the same thing in most apps. There is no menu item for it, so if neither sticks, click just after the character and use Delete instead.
The catch is in Finder rather than in text. Selecting a file and pressing Delete on its own does nothing at all, which is disconcerting the first time. Command and Delete moves it to the Trash. So does dragging it onto the Trash at the far right of the Dock.
The green button does not maximize
On Windows the middle button fills the screen and leaves everything else where it was. You can still see the taskbar, and Alt-Tab still works the way it did.
On a Mac the green button sends the window into full screen. The menu bar along the top disappears, the Dock disappears, and the window moves onto a space of its own that you swipe between. If that is not what you wanted, it feels like the app ran away with your screen.
Getting back out is not obvious, because the button you need has gone with the menu bar. Move the pointer to the very top of the screen and the menu bar slides back down with the three buttons on it. Click the green one again and you are out.
The catch is that a bigger window on the same screen, which is what most people actually wanted, is a different move. Press fn, Control and F, or choose Window, then Fill from the menu bar. The window fills the screen while the menu bar and the Dock stay exactly where they are. Double-clicking the title bar can do the same thing. That depends on a setting in System Settings, under Desktop & Dock, called Window title bar double-click action. Set it to Fill.
Snapping two windows side by side
On Windows you hold the Windows key and press left or right, and the window takes half the screen. It is muscle memory for anyone who works with two documents open.
A Mac does this too. Drag a window to the left or right edge of the screen and it tiles to that half. If nothing happens, the setting is in System Settings, under Desktop & Dock, in the Windows section, and it is called Drag windows to left or right edge of screen to tile.
From the keyboard it is fn, Control and the left or right arrow for halves, fn, Control and F to fill the screen, and fn, Control and R to put the window back the way it was. The halves and the other layouts sit in the menu bar under Window, then Move & Resize, with each shortcut printed beside them.
There is a second route worth knowing, because it is easy to miss and it does more. Hold the pointer over the green button without clicking and a menu drops down. It is almost all pictures rather than words: a row called Move & Resize for halves and quarters, a row called Fill & Arrange for filling the screen and for two and four window layouts, and Full Screen written out at the bottom. Pick the picture that matches the shape you want.
The catch is age. On an older Mac the only built-in option was full screen with a second app beside it, which is not the same thing and is worth knowing if the machine you bought is a few years old.
Scrolling probably feels backwards
On Windows, pushing two fingers up the trackpad moves the scroll bar down and the page moves up with it.
A Mac moves the content the way you would push a sheet of paper across a desk, so the same gesture goes the other way. There is a setting to reverse it, and no shame in reversing it.
It is in System Settings, under Trackpad, on the Scroll & Zoom tab. The toggle is called Natural scrolling. Turn it off and you get the Windows behavior back. Plenty of people who came from a PC turn it off on day one and never turn it on again.
Right-click exists, it is just not a button
On most Windows laptops the trackpad has a right half that acts as a right button, or a separate button below it.
A Mac trackpad has no visible second button. Holding Control while you click always gives you the right-click menu, whatever else is configured. A two-finger click on the trackpad usually does the same thing.
If two fingers does nothing on your machine, that is a setting rather than a fault. It is in System Settings, under Trackpad, and it is called Secondary click. It offers four options: off, click with two fingers, click in the bottom right corner, and click in the bottom left corner.
Finder is File Explorer
On Windows you open File Explorer and everything hangs off drives, starting with C.
On a Mac it is Finder, the blue face at the left end of the Dock. There is no C: drive and no drive letters at all, which is disorienting for a day and then simpler.
The catch is that the sidebar, not the drive, is how you get around. It runs down the left of every Finder window, and Applications is in it, which is where every installed app lives.
Uninstalling is dragging the app to the Trash
On Windows you go to Settings or the Control Panel and use the uninstaller.
On a Mac, most apps come off by dragging them from the Applications folder to the Trash at the end of the Dock, then emptying the Trash. A few arrive in a folder with their own uninstaller, and if yours has one, use it.
The catch is the Trash. Nothing is gone until you empty it, and once you do, it is gone for good. If you change your mind first, open the Trash, select the app and choose File, then Put Back.
Common questions
Is there a Task Manager on a Mac?
Two things split that job. Force Quit, in the Apple menu, closes something that has stopped responding. Activity Monitor, in the Utilities folder inside Applications, shows you everything running and what it is consuming.
Why is my Mac slow when I have closed everything?
Because you probably have not. The red button closes windows, not apps. Check the Dock for apps still running and quit them properly with Command and Q.
Where is the Control Panel?
It is called System Settings, and it holds less than you expect. A Mac keeps roughly half its settings inside the app they belong to rather than in one central place, which is worth knowing before you go hunting. We wrote about where that catches switchers out.
Where did my screenshot go?
On a Mac it goes to the desktop unless you have changed it. On Windows it may well be going to OneDrive as well, if OneDrive is backing up your Pictures folder. If you took one and nothing appeared, it almost certainly worked.
Where did Launchpad go?
It is gone. On Tahoe the grid of installed apps lives inside the search box instead: Command and the space bar, then Command and 1. Nothing was lost except the ability to arrange it yourself.
Do I need to install antivirus?
Different question, different answer, and not one to settle in a list of keyboard shortcuts. What is worth saying here is that most apps come off with a drag to the Trash, and the few that need more ship their own uninstaller, so there is no need to buy a tool for the job.
How long does it take to stop noticing?
About three days for the keyboard, a week or two for the muscle memory around windows and quitting. The things that do not fix themselves are a different category, and they are the subject of the guide linked below.
What does not fix itself
That is everything your hands need. Give it three days and you will stop reaching for the wrong key.
What does not sort itself out is the set of decisions the Mac made during setup, which quietly assumed you were an Apple person. Contacts filing into an account you cannot easily reach, invitations that never arrive, photos that stop backing up. Those do not announce themselves and they do not improve with practice. That is the guide to read next.
And if you have not bought the machine yet, our matching tool is not open, but when it is it will ask a few questions about how you actually work and find the refurbished machine that suits that. Leave your email and we will tell you when it opens. That is the only thing we will use it for.
Related
Sources
Routes and settings labels in this guide were checked on macOS Tahoe 26.6.2 on 9 and 11 September 2026. The Windows behavior described comes from Microsoft's own documentation.
Apple, View and open apps on Mac. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mh35840/26/mac/26 Checked 9 September 2026.
Apple, Search for anything with Spotlight on Mac. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mchlp1008 Checked 9 September 2026.
Apple, Take a screenshot on Mac. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102646 Checked 9 September 2026.
Apple, Quit apps on Mac. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mchl834d18c2 Checked 9 September 2026.
Apple, Mac window tiling icons and keyboard shortcuts. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mchl9674d0b0/mac Checked 11 September 2026.
Apple, Mac keyboard shortcuts. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102650 Checked 11 September 2026.
Apple, Delete files and folders on Mac. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/delete-files-and-folders-on-mac-mchlp1093/26/mac/26 Checked 11 September 2026.
Apple, Install and uninstall apps from the internet or a disc on Mac. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mh35835/mac Checked 11 September 2026.
Microsoft, Use Snipping Tool to capture screenshots. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/use-snipping-tool-to-capture-screenshots Checked 11 September 2026.
Microsoft, Keyboard shortcut for print screen. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/keyboard-shortcut-for-print-screen-601210c0-b3a9-7b58-bc40-bae4dcf5f108 Checked 11 September 2026.
Microsoft, Save screenshots to OneDrive automatically. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/save-screenshots-to-onedrive-automatically Checked 11 September 2026.