Spotlight
Spotlight is the system-wide desktop search feature built into Apple's OS X operating system since version 10.4 (Tiger). Backed by an index of all items and files on the system, it's designed to allow the user to quickly locate a wide variety of items on the computer...
Features
- Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
- Indexed search
- File Search
- Application Launchers
- File preview
Tags
- desktop-search
Spotlight News & Activities
Recent News
- Maoholguin published news article about iOS
Apple launches version 26 across iOS, macOS, iPadOS and more with new Liquid Glass designApple has officially released iOS 26, macOS 26 Tahoe, iPadOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS ...
- Maoholguin published news article about iOS
Apple unveils version 26 across its OS lineup with new design language & several featuresApple announced major operating system updates at WWDC 2025, introducing several new features acros...
Recent activities
POX added Spotlight as alternative to SupaSidebar
POX added Spotlight as alternative to LaunchDeck: App Launcher- POX added Spotlight as alternative to Raycast for Linux
- mounta11n liked Spotlight
POX added Spotlight as alternative to Mage App Launcher- ronn13ronn13 liked Spotlight
What is Spotlight?
Spotlight is the system-wide desktop search feature built into Apple's OS X operating system since version 10.4 (Tiger). Backed by an index of all items and files on the system, it's designed to allow the user to quickly locate a wide variety of items on the computer, including documents, pictures, music, applications, and System Preferences. In addition, specific words in documents and in web pages in a web browser's history or bookmarks can be searched. It also allows the user to narrow down searches with file attributes (e.g. creation dates, modification dates, sizes, types) and, as of OS X 10.9, tags. Pre-installed plugins for the New Oxford American Dictionary and Calculator applications also included in OS X allow Spotlight to define words and evaluate mathematical expressions.
Adapted from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(software)
Spotlight information
Developed by
Apple Licensing
Proprietary and Free product.Alternatives
90 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
Comments and Reviews
Spotlight is still one of the best system wide search engines thus far being trailed far behind with Window's slowly improve start search in Windows 10.