Switch Between One App Windows Mac

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You can quickly switch between windows on your Mac with a few keyboard shortcuts, as well as one involving the trackpad on a MacBook.

Let’s be honest: to the average person, the idea of running two different operating systems at the same time on one computer is pretty weird. This idea naturally leads to questions like these:

  • How do I know which one I’m using at any one moment?
  • How do I switch between them?
  • Which applications do I use?
How

And of course:

Switch Between One App Windows Mac Pro

  • Why would I want to do that?

As a Parallels Desktop® for Mac user, you can probably answer the last two questions like this:

  • Because I need to run some Windows applications, and I have (and love) a Mac®.

But you might not know all the ways you can switch between Mac and Windows, so in this blog post I’ll show you. Which one of these ways you might use depends on how you use Parallels Desktop.

1. Window Mode

In Window mode, Windows runs in a window on your Mac screen.

You switch between Mac and Windows just be moving your cursor—what could be easier! See Video 1:

How to switch from windows to mac

2. Full Screen Mode

In Full Screen mode, both Mac and Windows fill the entire screen. You switch between them with a three-finger swipe on your trackpad. See Video 2 (Note: The hand gesture video insets are from lifehacker.com):

3. Coherence Mode

In Coherence mode, Mac and Windows applications run side-by-side on the Mac desktop. You switch between them just as you would switch between two Mac applications: just click inside the window of the application you want to use. See Video 3:

I hope these three ways help you to easily and quickly switch between Mac and Windows whenever you want.

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If you are using the Boot Camp utility or another Windows emulator on your MacBook, you will need to switch between your Mac OS X and Windows systems. There are three methods of switching back and forth between your Mac OS X partition and your Windows partition:

How To Switch Between Windows And Os

  • From within Mac OS X Lion: To restart your MacBook in Windows, click System Preferences in the Dock and click the Startup Disk icon to display the settings you see here.

    Click the Windows partition you created in the list to select it (the folder icon will bear the Windows logo, and it will be labeled Windows as well). Click Restart, and then click Restart again when asked for confirmation. Your laptop reboots and loads Windows, and it continues to run Windows when started or rebooted until you follow one of the next two methods of returning to Mac OS X.

  • From within Windows: Right-click the Boot Camp icon in the notification area at the right side of your Windows taskbar — it looks like a slanted square — and choose Restart in Mac OS X. Again, you’ll be asked to confirm your choice. After you click OK, your MacBook reboots and returns to Lion.

  • During the boot process: Need a temporary fix from your other operating system? You can reboot from within either Lion or Windows and hold down the Option key when you see the Apple logo appear. Your Mac displays a nifty row of icons, each of which represents a bootable operating system that your Mac can use.

    To boot Mac OS X, click the Lion partition icon. To choose Windows, click the Windows partition icon. Note that when you turn on or reboot your Mac, it returns to the operating system you last selected in the System Preferences Startup Disk pane.