Spotlight is much better in macOS Tahoe — here’s what’s new

If you use a Mac at work or elsewhere, then you inevitably use Spotlight, Apple’s helpful search tool that has been blessed with a variety of productivity-enhancing improvements in macOS 26 Tahoe. Apple calls this the “biggest Spotlight update ever,” so it’s time to look at what’s new.

The big picture is that Spotlight Search has become faster, can surface more apps, files, and folders than before, and can do more with them. In part a search engine, in part a highly flexible launcher, you can even use Spotlight to find and run Shortcuts.

In other words, with macOS Tahoe, Spotlight has become the glue to bind productivity and information access together across your Apple ecosystem. I expect you’ll use it a lot, especially for work.

Let’s look at some of the improvements.

Opening up

You still open Spotlight by typing Command-Space, but once that’s done you can access a wealth of additional items as follows — just tap the right arrow or tab button, or use the keyboard sequence below:

Command-1 (or click the apps icon): Browse all your apps via a highly visual app launcher or begin typing something for other options.

Command-2 (or click the files icon): Browse your files. You can also filter files by file types and explore files/documents stored on your logged-in iCloud account.

Command-3: Open Quick Keys (described in more detail below). Here you can invoke an existing Quick Key shortcut or define new shortcuts.

Command-4: Open the Clipboard history menu. 

Spotlight will also offer intelligent suggestions based on what your system knows about what you usually do at a particular time of day, or what you were doing when you invoked Spotlight. For example, if you customarily send a document to someone on a particular day, you’ll find that document file and contact name placed at the top of the search dialog.

Apple

Quick Keys – app actions from Spotlight

Spotlight now supports shortcuts for performing actions within applications. You get to assign custom key combinations for frequent actions such as sending messages and can then use these “Quick Keys” to trigger these. 

In practice, this means you can open Spotlight, type “SM” (the Quick Key combination for Messages), and write and send your message from within the Spotlight dialog — without ever directly opening the app. 

There is already a rich collection of more than 100 built-in actions, and this number will expand to include third-party apps supporting App Intents. Actions you’ll get immediately include:

Send an email or message.

Set a Reminder, start a FaceTime call, play a podcast, open an app.

Move, rename, or delete files

Get directions in Apple Maps

Run Shortcuts

You can even generate AI images or text summaries via Apple Intelligence. There are many more, including system and app-specific actions as well as your own personalized Shortcut workflows. 

But what makes this system more useful is that once you invoke a shortcut, Quick Keys gives you a chance to configure the request. So, if you tap SM to send that Message, then tap Return, you’ll be asked to write the message and choose a recipient. 

If there is one missing feature, it’s that Spotlight can’t let you change OS settings; they generally still need to be managed from within System Settings.

Quick Key supports shortcuts of up to 12 characters, letters, numbers or a combination of both.

Searching the clipboard

In a quiet new superpower, Spotlight can now search your clipboard history, which lets you easily find items you might have copied but neglected to save or paste. You’ll find this in Spotlight when you use the right arrow key and tap the icon or tap Command-4.

When you use this, you’ll find everything you’ve saved to your Clipboard — that includes text, images, links, and files. You can delete items, copy them, copy multiple items, see what you did with those items, and reuse them. The only limitation is that the history on your Mac is only available for up to eight hours, after which the data disappears. That means more powerfully featured clipboard managers haven’t yet been completely Sherlocked, but for most of us this is good enough.

A better help system

Spotlight lets you search the menus of the app you are currently using. This isn’t completely new, as you’ve been able to do so via the Help Menu or by using Command-Shift-/. But most Mac users are accustomed to Command-Space for Spotlight, so this makes for much more convenience.

In use, this means that if the application you use supports it, you should be able to just tap Command-Space to launch Spotlight and search for the application action you need and be taken to the control you need to invoke that action. 

Be warned, not every application will support this. And I suspect at least one widely used app will still insist on using its own search for some of its application features, rather than fully respect Apple’s HIG (Human Interface Guidelines).

Smarter Spotlight

Apple Intelligence takes a bow in this release in the form of integration between Shortcuts and Spotlight. As a result, all those Shortcut actions supported by Apple Intelligence can also be triggered from within Spotlight. 

What this means is that you can create your own personalized Shortcuts workflows to invoke with an instruction in Spotlight. How this works is that you select the file(s) or document(s) you want to work with; tap Command-Space to invoke Spotlight; and type the relevant Shortcut name so the workflow is applied to those items. 

You could use this to summarize PDFs, resize images or convert them to different formats, save web pages as PDFs and more. Frankly, you’re only limited by the extent of the available Shortcuts items and your imagination.

Contextual intelligence is also available in Spotlight, which will intelligently suggest actions based on what your system identifies you are doing, or what it recognizes you usually do. Send a report every Monday to your boss? Spotlight will offer you easy access to the report template and your leader’s email. 

iPhone integration

The iPhone integration between your Mac and Spotlight is potentially very useful, though there are a couple of drawbacks. The first is that you’ll need to be logged into the same Apple ID on both systems, which may not always be the case in managed environments, if they permit use of the feature at all. The second is that the integration relies on iPhone Mirroring, which is a feature Apple isn’t supporting in Europe in order to keep user data safe from prying and unwelcome surveillance-based adware disguised as apps.

Otherwise, what happens is that when you run Spotlight search on your Mac to look for a specific app, the apps you will be provided with will include those apps on your iPhone. You’ll then be able to launch and use those apps on your iPhone from your Mac; it’s kind of auto-magical.

Outside Apple

If you’ve used the Files app, I imagine you’ve already spotted that you can add third-party storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive to it. This support has been extended to Spotlight, which theoretically means you should be able to use Apple’s system to find files and documents you’ve stored on those third-party storage services. I’ve not yet found out whether third parties will need to update their services to support this.

Spotlight in macOS Tahoe represents a major change in Mac functionality, one that should help you get more out of using your system every day.

The new operating system is currently available in public beta and is expected to ship in final release status this fall.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.