Why limit yourself to one OS? Nik Rawlinson finds out how to work seamlessly across different platforms

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THE WORLD USED TO be divided sharply into two tribes—you were a Windows person or an Apple person, and that was it. Today, that barrier has all but dissolved. Plenty of people are mixing and matching hardware, working with a range of PCs, Macs, and mobile devices, as suits the context or task at hand. Your choice of computer has never been less important—all that really matters is that you can access and work with your data.

Even in these enlightened times, however, that isn’t something you can always take for granted. Different file formats and ways of working can trip you up as you hop between platforms. If you’re running Windows and macOS side by side, or working alongside someone on a different platform, here’s our rundown of recommendations for working on PCs and Macs together. Most of them can be applied to Linux, too.

Productivity tools

The easiest way to work across platforms is to use an online office suite, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho Office, or the iCloud versions of Apple’s Pages, Numbers, and Keynote applications.

That’s not your only option, however. Microsoft Office is available for both Windows and macOS (plus iPadOS), and can conveniently synchronize documents via OneDrive. As a free alternative, LibreOffice also works on the Mac, PC, and Linux, and integrates with cloud storage services such as Google Drive to simplify the process of managing and accessing your documents.

If you don’t want to entrust your data to Google, you may prefer to set up your own WebDAV server for convenient document storage and sharing. This can reside on a commercial web host or your own hardware. An easy way to set it up is via the Nextcloud collaboration framework, which is included in the DietPi OS distribution for the Raspberry Pi and other single-board computers (dietpi.com).