How to use Windows keyboard shortcuts on a Mac

By Wondering Works, maker of Windsify · Updated September 15, 2026

You know the keys. Your hands know the keys. Then you sit down at a Mac and Ctrl+C does nothing. Here is why that happens, the three ways to fix it, and what each one costs you.

Why your shortcuts stopped working

Nothing is broken. macOS simply puts application shortcuts on a different key.

On Windows, almost every shortcut runs through Control: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+F. On macOS those same shortcuts live on Command, the key next to the space bar. Control on a Mac is kept for something older and more specific — control characters. In a terminal, Ctrl+C still means interrupt the running process, the way it has for fifty years.

So Ctrl+C on a Mac isn't a dead key. It is a busy key doing a different job. That distinction matters, because it is exactly what most fixes get wrong.

The Windows-to-Mac cheat sheet

If you only want the translation table, here it is. Anywhere you would press Ctrl on Windows, press Command on a Mac.

Some of these are close enough to learn in a week. Others aren't: Home and End moving to Command, undo and redo splitting across two different combinations, and rename landing on Return are the three that people are still fighting six months later.

Memorising the table is one option. The rest of this guide is about not having to.

Option 1: swap Control and Command in System Settings

macOS has a built-in remapper. Open System Settings › Keyboard › Keyboard Shortcuts › Modifier Keys, pick your keyboard from the menu, and you can reassign Caps Lock, Control, Option, Command and the Globe key. Set Control to act as Command and Command to act as Control, and Ctrl+C copies.

It works, it is free, and it takes ten seconds. It is also all-or-nothing, and that is the problem.

The swap moves the key, not the shortcut. Everything that used Command now needs Control, and everything that used Control now needs Command:

• Command-click to open a link in a new tab becomes Control-click — which is also how macOS does a right-click, so you get a context menu instead.
• Command+Tab is now Control+Tab, which many apps already use to move between tabs.
• In Terminal, interrupt is no longer Ctrl+C. It is Command+C, which is also copy in every other app you use.
• The change is per-keyboard, so plugging in a different keyboard means doing it again — and a Mac laptop's built-in keyboard behaves differently from the external one.

If you only ever write documents and never touch a terminal, this may be all you need. If you write code, it will bite you within a day.

Option 2: remap with hidutil

macOS ships a command-line tool called hidutil that remaps keys at a lower level than System Settings, using USB HID usage codes. It can do things the settings panel can't, such as remapping individual non-modifier keys.

Two caveats. First, it has the same fundamental limitation as the modifier swap: it moves keys, so it cannot tell the difference between Ctrl+C in a text editor and Ctrl+C in a terminal. Second, a hidutil mapping does not survive a reboot on its own — keeping it means writing a property list and loading it as a launch agent, and then remembering it exists the next time your keyboard behaves strangely.

Option 3: translate the shortcut, not the key

The third approach is different in kind. Instead of swapping which physical key is which, it watches for the shortcut you pressed and sends the Mac equivalent — one shortcut at a time, with the option to behave differently depending on which app is in front.

This is what Windsify does. Physical Control stays Control. There is no system-level modifier swap. When you press Ctrl+C in a text editor, it copies. When you press Ctrl+C in Terminal, it still interrupts, because a terminal is a place where Ctrl+A through Ctrl+Z should stay exactly what they have always been.

The same idea covers the shortcuts a straight key swap cannot reach at all:

Home and End are the clearest example of why context matters. They should jump to the start and end of a line — but only while you are actually editing text. Everywhere else the keys pass through untouched, so nothing unrelated fires. A key-level remapper has no way to know the difference.

The full list is on the shortcut reference page.

What about the Windows key itself?

Plug a Windows keyboard into a Mac and macOS reports the Windows key as Command and Alt as Option. That is the right logical mapping, but the physical order is crossed: a Windows keyboard runs Ctrl, Win, Alt from the left, while an Apple keyboard runs Control, Option, Command — so Command ends up one key further from the space bar than a Mac user expects. If you are pressing Windows shortcuts, that doesn't matter. There is more detail in the Windows key on a Mac.

What about snapping windows?

This is the other half of the switch, and it catches people who have already solved their keyboard. Windows has had Win+Left and Win+Right since 2009. macOS has window tiling, but the keyboard shortcuts and the drag-to-edge behaviour don't match what your hands do.

Windsify covers both halves in one app: halves, quarters, fill and restore, drag-to-edge previews and multi-display moves, on the Win+Arrow keys you already use.

For the window half of the setup, see native Mac tiling and Win+Arrow. For custom keyboard rules, see the Karabiner-Elements comparison.

Which one should you pick?

• You want free and you never open a terminal. Use the Modifier Keys swap in System Settings. Know that Control-click and Command+Tab will feel wrong.
• You are comfortable on the command line and enjoy configuring things. hidutil plus a launch agent will get you a long way, with the same terminal caveat.
• You want your hands to work on day one and you also want your windows back. That is what Windsify was built for.

Free uses generic Windows mappings inside embedded terminals, where Ctrl+C maps to copy instead of interrupt. Pro adds automatic VS Code terminal support; Codex and Claude use explicit terminal copy shortcuts.

Frequently asked questions

Keep your muscle memory

Windsify translates the shortcuts your hands already know and manages your windows, in one native menu-bar app. No telemetry, no account, and typed text is never collected or sent.

Download Windsify 1.4.13

Every download runs full Pro for 14 days, then keeps every Free feature. macOS 15 or newer, signed and notarized.

Related guides

• How to make Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V copy and paste on a Mac
• Alt+Tab on a Mac: switching apps the Windows way
• The Windows key on a Mac: what it does and how to use it
• Every shortcut Windsify maps