First, let me explain to you what is Windows + R command in the windows operating system
When you press the Windows key + R, Run windows will open
now, how the command works in run
so when you, write “calc” <– Enter, It will open the calculator application
so in the background system variable works, it’s already defined in the system variable
calc = c”\windows\system32\calc.exe
so whenever you write calc, following by Enter then calc application will open
I hope, it makes a sense
note that when you run the same command on the command prompt with the same file path for calc.exe then calculator application will open
The same happens with, notepad , cmd etc commands
Now, understand how we can execute the same on Mac.
Understand that you need to use the terminal to execute the command, With using the terminal you can
open any application or if you want to create a shortcut command like Windows+R you need to define variables for that.
So we will discuss in another article, how to make custom variables in Mac
Steps to open an application in Mac like “Windows r”
Terminal is very similar to both the run box and the command prompt (cmd) in Windows.
In Terminal, open is your favorite one !
- with open command, one can launch programs by exact path to the executable
- using open command to launch any program in the PATH directories by executable name
In Terminal, you can use open -a Application.app to launch an application that lives in the /Applications folder,
or open <exact path to applcation> to launch an application that is anywhere on your computer.
- open files in default applications
Just us open <file>. open song.mp3 will open song.mp3 in the default audio player (in my case iTunes)
- open an Explorer window into a local directory
- open an Explorer window into a network share
open /Path/to/dir/ will launch the folder in Finder
- open any URL with its default handler (e.g. a browser)
open http://russet.co.in will launch the default browser and open the url. It also works for FTP (but I have not tested anything else)
For more, just run man open in Terminal
Use Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
To launch a program, simply type its absolute location. You can execute a program in your current directory like so: ./somescript (Note the ./ which points it to the current directory, so Terminal doesn’t go looking through the path.)
To launch a program in the path, just type its name: python
To open files in their default application: open picture.png or open abcd.mp4 etc.
To open a Finder window: open somefolder or open /Users/yourname/Desktop/somefolder
To open a web page: open http://dlightdaily.com
Repeat steps again …
Finder, Go Menu, Connect to Server…
Put smb:// in front of the path.
And if not somewhat equivalent to Windows r in Microsoft os, then the Terminal application allows you access to the Unix command line.
Conclusion
To execute run command like windows in Mac 1. Use smb path and connect 2. Use terminal command 3. to create a custom shortcut command define a custom variable for your executable application command
I hope this will help you, If you know another way to use windows r on mac, do comment below