{"id":51013,"date":"2026-02-18T17:17:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T22:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=51013"},"modified":"2026-03-30T13:58:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T17:58:42","slug":"searching-for-apps-with-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/18\/searching-for-apps-with-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for Apps With Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/micro.inessential.com\/2026\/02\/18\/spotlight-has-recently-become-terrible.html\">Brent Simmons<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/micro.inessential.com\/2026\/02\/18\/spotlight-has-recently-become-terrible.html\">\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>I&rsquo;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&rsquo;t show the app <em>anywhere<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"searching-for-apps-with-spotlight-update-2026-02-19\">Update (<a href=\"#searching-for-apps-with-spotlight-update-2026-02-19\">2026-02-19<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/hachyderm.io\/@al3x\/116064621614102809\">Alex<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/hachyderm.io\/@al3x\/116064621614102809\">\n<p>Spotlight on my #macos #Tahoe keeps crashing because it encounters some issue inside its index.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/anulagarwal\/status\/2023666223880475046\">anul agarwal<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ClassicII_MrMac\/status\/2024184735833137655\">\nMr. Macintosh<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"searching-for-apps-with-spotlight-update-2026-02-20\">Update (<a href=\"#searching-for-apps-with-spotlight-update-2026-02-20\">2026-02-20<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/MacOS\/comments\/1r8hpvo\/dude_are_you_serious\/\">TanglyConstant9<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/MacOS\/comments\/1r8hpvo\/dude_are_you_serious\/\">\n<p>spotlight is meant to be GOOD not randomly decide its going to search the dictionary definition of the app im tryna open. this is crazy but i lowkey miss launchpad<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"searching-for-apps-with-spotlight-update-2026-03-30\">Update (<a href=\"#searching-for-apps-with-spotlight-update-2026-03-30\">2026-03-30<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/hachyderm.io\/@KatherineInCode\/116280290975333885\">Katherine Bertelsen<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/hachyderm.io\/@KatherineInCode\/116280290975333885\">\n<p>What really frustrates me about this is sometimes Spotlight will just&#8230;break. For no discernable reason. On my personal laptop, Friday it could find and run apps by name no problem. Yesterday, it couldn&rsquo;t. No reboots, no changes, no real anything. Just overnight it seemed to forget apps exist!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brent Simmons: 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&rsquo;ve never used Spotlight for this on macOS (preferring LaunchBar) but have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-02-18T22:17:59Z","apple_news_api_id":"58586a33-7ed4-43fa-9132-0c6c709b03da","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-03-30T17:58:45Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AWFhqM37UQ_qRMgxscJsD2g","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[131,31,2741,30,2742,343,1042],"class_list":["post-51013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-bug","tag-ios","tag-ios-26","tag-mac","tag-macos-tahoe-26","tag-search","tag-spotlight"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51013"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51423,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51013\/revisions\/51423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}