WinKeys - Bring your Windows muscle memory to macOS
rule 13: I used an AI coding assistant while building this
My mom used Windows her whole life and never really got along with it. Moving her to a Mac fixed most of that — except her hands. Ctrl+C did nothing, Alt+Tab did nothing, F2 didn't rename a file, the mouse scroll is backwards. Small things over and over, that's how a switch to macOS fails.
Karabiner can remap all of it, but the setup is a JSON rule file. That's not something you hand your new-to-mac mom and walk away from.
So I made WinKeys — a menu bar app that rewrites Windows shortcuts into their macOS equivalents before the keystroke reaches whatever app you're in.
Shift is preserved, so Ctrl+Shift+← still selects by word. Every rule has its own switch. Windows scroll direction is in there too, off by default, with separate switches for wheel and trackpad.
What it costs you: the blanket Ctrl→Cmd rule takes macOS's emacs bindings with it (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+E, Ctrl+K). Home/End become line start/end everywhere, so in browsers that's Back/Forward, not scroll-to-top. Both rules can be switched off.
Terminal, iTerm2, Ghostty, kitty, WezTerm, Warp and Emacs ship excluded so Ctrl+C still interrupts — add your own, or choose "Leave [App] Alone" from the menu bar.
Why not Karabiner? It's more powerful and always will be. This does one thing with switches instead of a config file. If you already have Karabiner rules for this, turn them off first or you won't be able to tell which tool did what.
macOS 13+, universal, signed and notarized. No kernel extension, no restart. Needs Accessibility permission; nothing is remapped until you grant it. Keystrokes are read to translate them and nothing else — nothing stored, no network calls except the update check.
Free for personal use, forever — every rule, no key, no account. $5 one-time per device for work use.
