Searching for Apps With Spotlight
Spotlight has recently become terrible for launching apps after being so good for years. Now when I type something like Cal or Calendar or even Calendar.app I have to manually select the actual app in the list, if it even appears.
I’ve never used Spotlight for this on macOS (preferring LaunchBar) but have used it often with iOS. These days, I find that searching for an iOS app with Spotlight often doesn’t show the app anywhere in the results. Sometimes it will give me a Wikipedia or App Store entry even though the app is already installed on my phone. Searching with App Library does work reliably.
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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.
