For years, Spotlight has been the central search location on your Mac. Since macOS Tahoe, Apple has dramatically expanded their search functionality on the Mac. This makes it easier than ever to find what you are looking for via Spotlight and you can perform actions in new ways.
During the search, all results, such as files, folders, events, apps and messages, are now together. The new filter options allow you to search more specifically, even in third-party cloud services. This way you can perform extensive searches for files and apps in no time using Spotlight for Mac.
Spotlight for Mac
Spotlight is macOS’ built-in search feature that helps you quickly find files, apps, emails, and more on your Mac. You can easily open Spotlight with the keyboard shortcut command⌘ + Spacebar or by clicking on the magnifying glass in the menu bar.
In addition to searching, Spotlight can also perform quick calculations, display definitions, and retrieve information from the Internet. Since macOS Tahoe, you can directly consult your Clipboard history from Spotlight, but before you can use this you must activate the function.
Files in search function
Using Spotlight you can not only search, but also view components. Once you open Spotlight, you can of course use the search bar to search for items such as files. In addition, you can also quickly view (recently opened) files using the browse view. This way you can easily browse through your content without the intervention of Finder.
For file viewing in Spotlight, macOS uses on-device intelligence to immediately show the most relevant files based on your context, such as recent activities and daily routines.
Files can also be arranged and grouped by relevance and apps, so you can instantly find all the files you’ve edited in preview. This way you can find what you’re looking for faster and you can immediately filter the results by file type.
Search in apps
In Spotlight on Mac, you can search not only for apps to open them, but also directly for content within those apps, such as notes in the Notes app, emails in Mail, or calendar items. This is also the case if you search for certain files present in apps like Photoshop, Preview, etc.
Open Spotlight hotkey command⌘ + Space bar or by clicking the magnifying glass in the menu bar, type an app name such as ‘Preview’ followed by Tab and then your search term, after which Spotlight will show the relevant results from that app. This feature works for apps that support Spotlight, so you can quickly find what you’re looking for and navigate to it directly without opening the app.