Searching for Apps With Spotlight

You can restrict the search to apps now in Tahoe though (command-space for Spotlight, then Command-1 for apps).
But I agree: one more shortcut that we didn't need.
I use Alfred for these things when Spotlight fails me.

I'm having a similar (though opposite!) problem on iPadOS 26. After a few days, spotlight only returns settings and apps, and never files or other search results. For example, I have a Numbers sheet called "Subscriptions" that tracks my various subscription expenses. At some point, iPad spotlight stops showing that file in the search results when I type "subscr", and only shows the Subscriptions OS setting as the result. If I power-cycle the iPad, spotlight then returns my Numbers sheet (along with the OS setting option and a bunch of other web nonsense related to the term "subscription"). Still broken in 26.3.

I have not had these issues on my Macs or iOS devices thankfully. On the phone if I search for an app it always is the top hit. On the Mac it's the same. The only time I've seen problems is sometimes the Spotlight indexer is behind after I install a new app but that eventually resolves. There are also a ton of options now in the settings for search/spotlight that might be causing an issue.

I had this problem on iOS consistently with a few apps in particular. I finally discovered the issue: when you set an app to require Face ID to open (which I do for various apps), it defaults to not showing that app in Spotlight search results. You can fix it by going to Settings->Search, finding the app in the list, then switching on “Show App in Search”

Usually when I invoke Spotlight and type in a search term, it pauses for a few seconds while macOS decides it has to spin up an external hard drive or two before it can even begin to show me results. Spotlight is flaky and a huge pain. I tend to use Quicksilver for launching.

@Josh Interesting, thanks. I don’t think I have any apps set to require Face ID, and the fact that it’s intermittent for a given app makes me doubt that’s what’s happening, but I’ll check the next time this happens.

Typing "sys", enter --> systém information drives me crazy.

I tried Josh's patch a couple of weeks ago, and for me it works irregularly, sometimes showing settings, emails, or other things.
For me, the situation is a bit different. My system is set to a different language, so I could launch Calendar by typing “Calendar” or “Kalender” in Spotlight. Now only “Kalender” works, or I'd I type the full English name of the app like “System Settings” or “Calendar” instead of “Cal” - Frankly I don't know the localized names of all apps I use, and until now I didn't had to.

On iOS, on the other hand, both localized names still work. Typing “Ca” or “Ka” will show “Kalendar”

This change in macOS 26 has been very uncomfortable.

Asking Spotlight to find apps has been broken for me for years, going back to at least Mojave. Sometimes it would work, but often it would just fail to find any existence of an app that's right in the Applications folder. For a little while I used Alfred, but then they changed their search back end to Spotlight and then it became just as broken. I actually ended up going back to Quicksilver!

I have no idea why Spotlight has been so bad for me for so long. It feels like with Tahoe everyone else's Spotlight experience is 'catching up' to where mine had been for so long.

I've added a keyboard shortcut to Launchpad, and I'm using that, and never looked back...

I used to use Quicksilver in the past, but I didn't use it's features...

>I have no idea why Spotlight has been so bad for me for so long.

It hasn't worked for me for at least a decade.

@Doekman Didn’t they get rid of Launchpad with Tahoe?

There's some key jangle I have to do a couple of times a year to get Spotlight to world smoothly and quickly.

Rebuilding the index or something.

Surprised me everytime

Of course I tried rebuilding the Spotlight index. It didn't fix any of the problems!

Maybe if I did a complete ground up reinstall of my entire system, starting from a completely wiped drive and then laboriously copied over all of my data and manually reinstalled all of my apps it would fix it. But then it very well may get itself back into a broken state again with no recourse, because it's already done it once.

I should have been clearer that what surprises me it's that I have to do it.

I launch all my apps with spotlight all the time, and to constantly have that experience degraded over time is frustrating.

Especially since the fox (so far) had been running some terminal command.

And I'm not a terminal person, I'm the kind of user who wants things to just work.

It's too slow. Having any perceptible wait after typing "saf" before seeing a Safari app result is unacceptable. Clearly users will continue to use spotlight primarily for finding their apps, so it should be optimized for that. There is the app search mode (press tab once in spotlight) and it's quicker, but still somehow not instant. Not sure if we should blame this on some SwiftUI high latency BS or what.

More incentive to invest in raycast or monarch or another launcher ig.

Ok so there is a usable setup for "I want fast app search by default" people. You can just remap to the Apps app (lol).

In settings Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Spotlight:
1. Toggle off "Show Spotlight search".
2. Toggle on "Show Apps" and set its shortcut to .

Now cmd-space brings up the Apps launcher and you can find apps with livable latency.

But what if I want to use spotlight? Well, the Apps app is actually that same sub-mode of spotlight we're familiar with, so you can just hit Esc and be in spotlight like normal. We have essentially inverted the default. (and you can of course also bind spotlight separately if you wish)

Agh, the angle-bracketed shortcut syntax got swallowed. Fixed:

... You can just remap cmd-space to the Apps app (lol).
... Toggle on "Show Apps" and set its shortcut to cmd-space.