day-to-day i much prefer using mac os than windows 10 but however growing up a microsoft boy there are just some things i'm much more used to coming from windows the alt tab shortcut feature is something i really missed on mac os and even though mac os has command tab it's not the same you can only cycle through open applications rather than open windows in this video i'm going to talk about alt tab a lightweight application built by lo luis lawrence luis and other contributors on github to bring windows like alt tab to the mac let's get started alt tab is a super lightweight application that lives in your menu bar that brings windows like alt tab to the mac as i mentioned before mac os does have a built-in application switcher via command tab but it only allows you to cycle through your open applications rather than your open windows this can be prompt since when you summon an application from the command tab menu it summons all open windows of that application to the front of the windows stack so for an app such as safari where it's quite common to have multiple open windows they will all rush to the front of the windows stack when in reality i just want the window i was last on also if i wanted to switch to a specific window within an application i just cannot do that with command tab so alt tab fixes these issues in windows alt tab cycles through all your open windows instead of apps therefore is much easier to find the specific window you want without all of them rushing to the front of the windows stack [Music] you can sell alt tab easily using one of two ways first you can head to the alt tab website linked down below which has easy access to download the latest release from the alt tab github alternatively if you like using package managers you can install alt tab using homebrew via the instructions given on their website now you may be alarmed the first time you run alt tab because it's going to request all kinds of permissions such as screen recording and access to your keystrokes but don't be alarmed as far as i can tell it needs access to things like the keyboard so it actually knows when to bring up the window switcher menu when you hit your hotkey and it needs access to record your screen so it can show the little thumbnail previews of each of your windows within alt tab in terms of customization alt tab allows you to customize all sorts of things so if we click on the little alt tab icon in your menu bar you can scroll down to preferences and it will open up the preferences menu in the general tab we have some kind of standard stuff uh if you want to start the application at login you can check that here something that's kind of nice is you can actually change the icon in your menu bar so there's four options there is two monochrome options kind of with inverted colors a color option which i like the most and there's also an option to show nothing in your menu bar which is kind of nice moving on to the controls tab this is where we start to get into the meat of the program so let's go through the options from top to bottom first up show windows from this is where you can customize what kind of windows you want to appear in the alt tab program so for instance if i'm in safari i can have alt tab only show me open windows in safari you can also tell alt tab to only show you windows open on the monitor you are currently on which is kind of neat you can choose if you want full screen applications to actually show in the menu or not and then down here is actually where you can configure what kind of hotkey you want to set to activate alt tab so i have mine set to command tab so that overrides the default mac os implementation but you can set it to pretty much anything you want i just like this the most and then down below are all the other hotkeys you can use to modify each window that you have highlighted in alt tab so if you want to go through and quit a bunch of windows you can do that here you can close certain windows without closing the application also at the top as you can see you can set two shortcuts that have totally different settings so i could set command tab to show me all my windows and then option tab to only show me windows in my open application which is pretty cool and for both of those you just have access to the same settings that you would for the other one in the appearance window this is where you can fine tune exactly how you want alt tab to look i don't really mess with this too much but you could set a mac os theme to make it kind of look how apple would do it if they made alt tab or you could set a windows 10 theme which makes it look more like windows i like the default mac os theme a lot so i didn't mess around here a lot but you can change how much space you have in between the windows you can change how big the thumbnails are you can change the order in which the thumbnails appear you can change what screen alt tab appears on just you can change pretty much anything you want some of these are going to impact your performance i wouldn't say it's a big deal but when you're trying to fade in or fade out a ton of alt tab screens that is going to take a bit of a performance hit in the policies tab this is where it just asks you do you want to update automatically do you want to report crashes to the developer in the blacklist tab this is where you can blacklist certain windows from not appearing in alt tab the about tab is pretty self-explanatory it shows you what version you're on which is pretty cool and then acknowledgements is giving credit to all the amazing developers that have contributed to this project in terms of criticism i don't have a lot of negative things to say about this app however i did notice that if you're using an older mac like me there can be some lag sometimes either the menu will take an extra second or two to appear after you hit the hotkey or if you have a lot of windows it will lag as you're trying to select through them but as i said it's not a deal breaker at all and i only notice it because i have kind of an old machine there's a 2015 base macbook pro and it only happens when i have a ton of windows open [Music] in conclusion this app is fantastic if you're someone like me who wants the windows alt tab feature on mac os look no further than alt tab even if you're on the fence about this app it is totally free to download so why not download it try it out for yourself and see if you like it day to day it's a fun lightweight app that allows me to customize my mac os experience to my liking it's also worth mentioning that this app is open source so if you're the tinkering type you could change i'll tab to your liking or contribute to the project on github that's it for this video i hope you guys enjoyed if you want me to check out any mac or windows apps leave a comment down below we upload every single week on top specs so chances are if you like this video then there are some others you'll like on the channel that's it for today though thank you so much for watching and we will see you guys next week you