7 Popular Windows Apps You Can’t Find on macOS

The vast Windows ecosystem means that not every popular app has made the jump to Apple’s macOS world. Here are some of the most popular Windows apps you won’t find on macOS, along with the best alternatives when available.

1 Netflix

The Netflix app for Windows provides all the useful features available in the mobile app, including picture-in-picture (PiP) and rich 5.1 audio support. This app allowed you to download movies and shows to watch offline. However, the most up-to-date version of the app is now the web wrapper. This means that the quality and performance of streaming has improved significantly, but the download function is no longer available.

You can still get the download feature if you roll back to version 6.99.5, but that may require downloading the older Netflix app from a third-party source, as Netflix doesn’t make it available directly. Mac users, meanwhile, are limited to just the web app.

Download: Netflix (free, subscription required)

2 Paint.NET

Paint.NET is one of the most popular image editing tools in Windows. With support for third-party plugins, it excels in ease of use and is an excellent tool for everything from quick edits on the go to professional pixel art.

Standard image editing options are intuitively located and easily accessible, allowing you to adjust color or add filters. It also has a number of special effects to blur, sharpen or distort the image. Other notable features include an excellent edit history for unlimited undo/redo and a well-executed image resizing option.

Paint.NET is not available for macOS, but Pinta is a comparable alternative. It offers similar editing features and closely mimics the user interface, but lacks support for third-party plugins.

Download: Paint.NET (Free)

3 Notepad++

If a full-fledged IDE seems too bulky for quick editing or code review, Notepad++ could be the solution. This free app supports most scripting languages ​​and is one of the best code editors for syntax highlighting. You can take quick notes, read text files, and even compile and run code.

Notepad++ offers features such as text wrapping, automatic language detection, multi-tab support, and third-party plugin support to extend its functionality. It lacks some IDE-specific features, such as built-in error detection and code formatting. However, it is perfect for tasks such as editing system configuration files for web servers.

It handles large files efficiently, loads quickly, and automatically saves changes, so you won’t lose unsaved work if you forget to save or an unexpected reboot occurs.

Notepad++ is a Windows-only tool. Fortunately, many of the best text editors for Mac offer similar features.

Download: Notepad++ (Free)

4 WinRAR

Although Windows 11 now has native support for TAR and RAR file archives, WinRAR continues to be a popular file management tool in the Windows ecosystem due to the versatile file compression and extraction features it offers. But there is more to it. It allows you to compress files to reduce their size and protect file archives with strong password and encryption.

WinRAR is not free, but individuals can continue to use the tool after a 40-day trial. Most will probably find 7-Zip to be an excellent alternative because it’s free and comes with the same robust features.

Unfortunately, macOS can only access the command line version of WinRAR. If you’re looking for a more affordable alternative, The Unarchiver and Keka are great options for Mac.

Download: WinRAR (free trial, $29)

5 PowerToys

PowerToys is a collection of free productivity tools that the default Windows installation lacks. The main window provides access to all the different tab-separated tools like Always On Top, Color Picker, Crop and Lock, etc.

Some of the PowerToys that I use almost every day include the Peak, which allows me to quickly preview files in File Explorer, and Awake I can usetemporarily disable Windows sleep mode.

I also use Fancy Zone to create custom window layouts in Windows and Borderless Mouse to move the mouse between multiple devices. Finally, Always On Top allows me to keep the most important application windows in the foreground of my desktop so I never lose them.

You can use other tools, such as Workspaces, to configure and launch a set of applications in a custom position on the desktop with one click. With more than 26 tools, PowerToys is an essential tool for any Windows user who wants to make their computer more efficient.

macOS does not have an exact equivalent to PowerToys, although several similar features are integrated directly into the operating system. Preview offers quick file browsing like Peak, and you can easily batch rename multiple files at once using the default Rename option.

For more advanced features, you’ll need to rely on third-party apps like Rectangle, MuteMe, and Afloat, which mimic Fancy Zone, Video Conference Mute, and Always on Top.

Download: Microsoft PowerToys (Free)

6 ShareX

ShareX is my Windows screen capture tool for taking, editing and annotating screenshots. Its multitude of options means you can use it to quickly take a screenshot, assign a hotkey to launch the delayed screenshot feature, or create a GIF right from the taskbar.

ShareX can do basic screen recording, which is the least impressive part of the tool, but it’s there if you need it. What’s impressive though is the built-in image editor. The editor allows you to quickly crop, annotate, blur, add text to an image and much more. The ShareX Smart Eraser allows you to remove unwanted parts of an image by blending the content and background color. When taking a screenshot, you can automate various tasks like adding a border to each image you save, uploading it to cloud storage, and more.

Finding a similar tool for macOS can be tricky, especially since ShareX is completely free, but some of the best screenshot apps for Mac are coming your way.

Download: ShareX (Free)

7 All

Windows File Explorer is an excellent file management tool, except for its laboriously slow search function. In contrast, the Everything search engine finds files on your drive almost instantly with a simple name search, often displaying results before you’ve even finished typing.

You can further speed up the process by adding search filters and modifiers to find specific file types, or refine them by specific criteria, such as case sensitivity or full paths. Everything also uses the default system context menu, so you can quickly perform all supported File Explorer actions directly from the interface.

Find Any File might be the closest alternative to Everything for macOS, although it’s not as fast.

Download: All (Free)

While macOS offers a wide variety of applications, some of the most popular programs remain exclusive to Windows due to platform-specific options and legacy support. Of course, you can always find an alternative; they just don’t have to offer all the same features. If you want the best of both worlds, there are plenty of virtualization options like Parallels Desktop to run Windows apps on your Mac.