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macOS differences

Where the Mac build looks and behaves differently from Windows and Linux: the native menu bar, the Command key, and a handful of items that move, change key or are missing entirely.

On Windows and Linux, Celas Studio draws its own menu bar inside the window, along with the minimise, maximise and close buttons. On macOS none of that exists: the app uses the real system menu bar and the native title bar instead, with an App menu at the far left the way every Mac app has one.

The Command-key rule

Wherever this manual or the app itself shows a Ctrl shortcut, hold Command (⌘) instead on macOS. Every shortcut is stored once and resolved per platform: Ctrl on Windows and Linux, ⌘ on macOS. Rebinding a shortcut in Preferences ▸ Shortcuts works the same way on all three.

On macOS, physical Control must not be held for a shortcut to fire, only ⌘ (plus Shift/Option where the chord calls for them). On Windows and Linux the same rule applies to the Windows/Super key.

The App menu

The App menu, labelled with the app's name, carries items that live in Edit or Help on Windows and Linux:

  • About Celas Studio: same dialog as Help ▸ About elsewhere
  • Preferences… (⌘,): the same Preferences window as Edit ▸ Preferences elsewhere
  • Hide Celas Studio (⌘H), Hide Others (⌥⌘H), Show All: standard macOS app hiding, with no equivalent on Windows or Linux
  • Quit Celas Studio (⌘Q)

The Window menu

macOS adds a native Window menu with Minimize (⌘M), Zoom, Enter Full Screen (⌃⌘F), and a live list of open windows, none of which exist on Windows or Linux. This is separate from Celas Studio's own Window menu, which still holds panel visibility and workspaces on every platform.

While a text field has focus, the App and Edit menu equivalents for Select All, Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo, Redo, Duplicate and Group/Ungroup are greyed out, so typing in a field never triggers one of them by accident.

The native macOS menu bar with the App menu open, showing About, Preferences, Hide and Quit.

Menu items missing or changed on macOS

  • File ▸ Exit does not exist: Quit lives in the App menu instead.
  • Edit ▸ Preferences does not exist in Edit: it is in the App menu instead, still on ⌘,.
  • Help ▸ About does not exist in Help: it is in the App menu instead.
  • Window ▸ Workspace on macOS only lists the built-in General, Animation and Minimal layouts: workspaces you have saved yourself, and the right-click Delete on them, appear only in the Windows/Linux menu.

Shortcuts on macOS

Every chord resolves the same way on all three platforms, with ⌘ standing in for Ctrl. ⌘0 fits the canvas and ⌘1 is 100%, matching the Windows and Linux keys and the Preferences list; ⌘D duplicates, or deselects while a pixel selection is live, exactly as Ctrl+D does elsewhere.

The one macOS-specific detail is what the menu bar PRINTS. A key equivalent attached to an NSMenu item is consumed by the system before the app can see the keystroke, so a command whose meaning depends on context cannot carry one: whichever item claimed the chord would answer every press. Duplicate, Deselect All, onion skinning and Delete therefore appear in the macOS menu bar with no key beside them. The keys themselves work normally.

Earlier builds did swap ⌘0 / ⌘1 and gave ⌘D to Duplicate and ⇧⌘A to Deselect All. If you are reading an older screenshot, that is why it disagrees with this page.

Projects in Finder

The app bundle declares .cls as its own document type, Celas Studio Project, so Finder shows the project icon and the type name rather than a blank document, and Open With lists Celas Studio first. This matters more on a Mac than on Windows: LaTeX and Visual Basic both use .cls too, and Launch Services would otherwise hand your projects to whichever of them you have installed.

The declaration comes with the bundle, so nothing is written outside the app and there is no per-user setup. Moving Celas Studio to a different folder is enough for Finder to notice; if it does not, log out and back in to make Launch Services rescan.

Trackpad and mouse

On macOS, a two-finger scroll pans the canvas and a pinch gesture zooms it, matching how every other Mac app handles a trackpad. Ctrl (or ⌘) plus the scroll wheel also zooms, as a fallback for an external mouse.

On Windows and Linux the wheel always zooms: there is no scroll-to-pan and no trackpad-specific mode, and no preference to switch between the two behaviours on any platform. Panning without a trackpad works the same everywhere: hold Space and drag, or use the Hand tool.