{"slug": "spotlight", "name": "Spotlight", "category": "productivity", "category_name": "Productivity", "description": "", "recommenders": 1, "commenters": 15, "warners": 12, "score": -9.771, "rising": -0.33, "first": "2026-01-16", "latest": "2026-10-29", "why": "", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2, "compare": 0, "warn": 12}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Spotlight"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 780478560, "item_id": 48779910, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48779910", "by": "LoganDark", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Spotlight to launch apps", "excerpt": "I just hide the dock. I don't need it -- I use Spotlight to launch apps and Cmd+Tab or Rcmd to access them. The Dock is a waste of space for me.", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "launching apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Dockside \u2013 I turned unused space around the macOS Dock into a workspace"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 804625473, "item_id": 50289092, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289092", "by": "bschwindHN", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I use spotlight to search for the \"spotlight\" system preferences window.", "excerpt": "That's funny. I wish they'd use their better performance to not have the system lag at basic rendering over time. Last week I was watching a youtube video, and every time I adjusted the OS volume, the video dropped several frames because macos apparently couldn't render the liquid ass volume control and play the video smoothly at the same time. A reboot fixed it, but it's just such amateur hour with things that have ", "context": "", "use_case": "searching and launching", "switched_from": "", "story": "MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch"}, {"id": 802031745, "item_id": 50126984, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50126984", "by": "soulofmischief", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I don't need Spotlight indexing. At all.", "excerpt": "I already have encountered dozens upon dozens of threads, dating back nearly a decade, complaining about duetexpertd. Even if it's meant to do background work, when it starts taking multiple entire cores to do this work, it is categorically not a background service. Personally I have seen the situation get massively worse since I entered the macOS ecosystem in '23. My machine is running hot right now on flat surface ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple ML Research: Muse Spark Open with MLX on Mac Studio"}, {"id": 799332352, "item_id": 49958272, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958272", "by": "lynndotpy", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space.", "excerpt": "The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space. For many users, it is a strict downgrade that was forced on them against their consent.", "context": "", "use_case": "search on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back"}, {"id": 797744851, "item_id": 49859053, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49859053", "by": "setopt", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Spotlight was near-unusable when I switched as well.", "excerpt": "Good examples. When I switched to Mac in ~2020, the Mac users I knew all told me to avoid Time Machine \u2013 at least two had issues where they needed their backups, only to find that the entirety of their backups had been silently corrupted. (I used Arq then based on online recommendations, now I use Vorta on my Mac just because that\u2019s what I use on Linux.) Spotlight was near-unusable when I switched as well. Often 5+ s", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS launcher/search", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy"}]}], "who": [{"by": "LoganDark", "context": "macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48779910", "date": "2026-07-03"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["app launcher", "searching and launching", "currency conversion", "search on macos", "macos launcher/search", "app search"], "compared": [{"slug": "alfred", "name": "Alfred", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 3}, {"slug": "raycast", "name": "Raycast", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "quicksilver", "name": "Quicksilver", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "macos", "name": "macOS", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49701004", "title": "iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50276940", "title": "MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50118320", "title": "Apple ML Research: Muse Spark Open with MLX on Mac Studio", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50071310", "title": "New Apple TV 4K", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49957116", "title": "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49842487", "title": "The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"warn": 2}, "2026-02": {"warn": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"warn": 5}, "2026-10": {"warn": 3, "neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804625473, "item_id": 50289092, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289092", "by": "bschwindHN", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I use spotlight to search for the \"spotlight\" system preferences window.", "excerpt": "That's funny. I wish they'd use their better performance to not have the system lag at basic rendering over time. Last week I was watching a youtube video, and every time I adjusted the OS volume, the video dropped several frames because macos apparently couldn't render the liquid ass volume control and play the video smoothly at the same time. A reboot fixed it, but it's just such amateur hour with things that have ", "context": "", "use_case": "searching and launching", "switched_from": "", "story": "MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch"}, {"id": 802031745, "item_id": 50126984, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50126984", "by": "soulofmischief", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I don't need Spotlight indexing. At all.", "excerpt": "I already have encountered dozens upon dozens of threads, dating back nearly a decade, complaining about duetexpertd. Even if it's meant to do background work, when it starts taking multiple entire cores to do this work, it is categorically not a background service. Personally I have seen the situation get massively worse since I entered the macOS ecosystem in '23. My machine is running hot right now on flat surface ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple ML Research: Muse Spark Open with MLX on Mac Studio"}, {"id": 801341488, "item_id": 50083843, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50083843", "by": "asimovDev", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use it sometimes to quickly do currency conversion", "excerpt": "I use it sometimes to quickly do currency conversion, I am assuming it does an online request to a currency exchange API. If that counts, then count me as a person who does want to see online results. But I did disable the web search results in Spotlight settings, that's just annoying", "context": "", "use_case": "currency conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Apple TV 4K"}, {"id": 799332352, "item_id": 49958272, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958272", "by": "lynndotpy", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space.", "excerpt": "The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space. For many users, it is a strict downgrade that was forced on them against their consent.", "context": "", "use_case": "search on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back"}, {"id": 797744851, "item_id": 49859053, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49859053", "by": "setopt", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Spotlight was near-unusable when I switched as well.", "excerpt": "Good examples. When I switched to Mac in ~2020, the Mac users I knew all told me to avoid Time Machine \u2013 at least two had issues where they needed their backups, only to find that the entirety of their backups had been silently corrupted. (I used Arq then based on online recommendations, now I use Vorta on my Mac just because that\u2019s what I use on Linux.) Spotlight was near-unusable when I switched as well. Often 5+ s", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS launcher/search", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy"}, {"id": 795294754, "item_id": 49705922, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49705922", "by": "josephg", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I got so annoyed at this recently I turned off spotlight entirely", "excerpt": "I got so annoyed at this recently I turned off spotlight entirely and replaced it with 3rd party software. I couldn\u2019t be happier with my choice. Check out Raycast / Alfred.", "context": "", "use_case": "app search", "switched_from": "", "story": "iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27"}, {"id": 795239905, "item_id": 49702494, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49702494", "by": "Stitch4223", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Spotlight search has completely stopped working.", "excerpt": "Normally I\u2019d agree. But my experience with 26 hasn\u2019t been great. From the top of my head: Random repeated flashing window chrome in the background, notifications that keep on showing while everything is disabled, Finder tooltips from four windows down, tooltips that don\u2019t disappear, Java update interruptions that hijack your flow - just when you where about to hit enter for something else the pop-up shows and bam: yo", "context": "", "use_case": "search", "switched_from": "", "story": "iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27"}, {"id": 795237745, "item_id": 49702359, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49702359", "by": "tensor", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "new delayed results would steal highlight focus so hitting the enter button to select something from the list became a lottery", "excerpt": "MacOS 26 forced me to give up spotlight for Raycast. It would do this thing where new delayed results would steal highlight focus so hitting the enter button to select something from the list became a lottery. Would you select the thing you see or would something else replace it in the time you press the button. I use Raycast now and it's 1000x better simply because it actually selects the highlighted thing.", "context": "", "use_case": "app launcher", "switched_from": "", "story": "iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27"}, {"id": 794154386, "item_id": 49634649, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49634649", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-09-09", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I turned off Spotlight indexer completely", "excerpt": "> I notice it on macOS So, on Mac there are two main problems - displaying and fork/exec. Rendering on Mac is slower because NS port display backend just sucks. Emacs's redisplay emits many small drawing operations per frame - one per glyph run, cursor, or fringe bitmap. X11/cairo and pgtk on Linux batch those very efficiently - Cocoa has nothing comparable here. You can try installing one of the forks of Mitsuharu's", "context": "", "use_case": "file search on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Emacs Consult async searches feel slow and how to speed them up"}, {"id": 782657104, "item_id": 48916069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916069", "by": "gumby", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use a calculator (these days N PP, or spotlight)", "excerpt": "TBH, the calculator example isn\u2019t an encouraging one. I use a calculator (these days N PP, or spotlight). But by the time I do that I already have an approximate ide of why the answer is, so if it\u2019s way off, or the sign is wrong, I see it immediately. Same with GPS, though many folks have no idea how to navigate on their own anymore so often don\u2019t notice when they\u2019ve accidentally had a typo or chosen the wrong Spring", "context": "", "use_case": "quick calculations", "switched_from": "", "story": "Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?"}, {"id": 780478560, "item_id": 48779910, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48779910", "by": "LoganDark", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Spotlight to launch apps", "excerpt": "I just hide the dock. I don't need it -- I use Spotlight to launch apps and Cmd+Tab or Rcmd to access them. The Dock is a waste of space for me.", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "launching apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Dockside \u2013 I turned unused space around the macOS Dock into a workspace"}, {"id": 779662816, "item_id": 48728926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48728926", "by": "ivell", "date": "2026-06-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Spotlight used to be great for quick look up of files, now it is pretty much useless for me.", "excerpt": "I used to look forward to MacOS upgrades. Nowadays I dread it. Spotlight used to be great for quick look up of files, now it is pretty much useless for me. I am back to using finder and manually looking up files. I hope things would improve and not degrade further. The updated icons is going in the right direction. More clarity and less useless effects.", "context": "long-time macOS user", "use_case": "file search", "switched_from": "Spotlight", "story": "macOS Golden Gate icon comparison"}, {"id": 752120960, "item_id": 47007560, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007560", "by": "devhouse", "date": "2026-02-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It makes me want to create a similar landing page for Apple to fix Spotlight Search.", "excerpt": "This is a brilliant, Love that timer, not sure why the exact time frame was picked though. It makes me want to create a similar landing page for Apple to fix Spotlight Search. I remember when I used to be able to just find and launch apps on my Mac.", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "launching apps on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone"}, {"id": 747727568, "item_id": 46732973, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46732973", "by": "samtheprogram", "date": "2026-01-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Spotlight has really been bothering me lately, for months now", "excerpt": "Spotlight has really been bothering me lately, for months now, and it\u2019s not even indexing all the time. I disabled all but applications and the calculator, because that\u2019s all I use Spotlight for, and it still can\u2019t find some apps that are in /Applications. Sometimes it\u2019s some apps, sometimes it\u2019s everything, and after rebooting it\u2019ll sometimes reindex. No idea what\u2019s going on, but today might be the day I install Qui", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "launching apps and calculator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bugs Apple Loves"}, {"id": 746403088, "item_id": 46650193, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46650193", "by": "socalgal2", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Spotlight is completely broken in Tahoe.", "excerpt": "I ran into this yesterday. My entire machine was running slow. I checked Activity Monitor and it was mediaanalysisd running at 100% for about an hour. i couldn't kill it as it would just restart. A search said I was S.O.L. unless I disabled SIP. (can't, it's a work laptop) Further, Spotlight is completely broken in Tahoe. I have all categories off in System Preferences except Apps because it's the only thing I use or", "context": "uses a work laptop", "use_case": "app launcher", "switched_from": "", "story": "Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?"}]}