Most of my Spotlight use is actually launching apps or opening docs. It allows me to keep my fingers on the keyboard and launch an app or a doc with a simple cmd-space from anywhere, which to me is bliss.
Only, at some point Apple must have changed the behavior (I guess some time before Sonoma or Ventura, I’m using it most under Sequoia) so that the top hit is not always pre-selected. I’m not sure when it is or isn’t, but for some docs, even when I enter the file name perfectly correctly and the doc indeed shows up at the top of the list, the file still doesn’t get auto-selected. So then I first have to also hit tab or down arrow before I can hit return to get it to finally open.
Is it clear to anybody why this sometimes doesn’t work like it should or what I can do to get it to always auto-select the top hit?
Is there a free (or near-free) replacement for just global app/doc launching? I know there are rather big packages (like LaunchBar) that replace Spotlight and come with a bunch of features and lots to configure and yada. Not interested in that no matter how great. I really just want something small and simple to quickly launch apps and docs from my KB. Alfred seems to do that, but it’s not picking up all of my docs and its prefs are so gargantuan it’s no surprise I cannot configure it right. Any other alternatives I should check out?
Tahoe Spotlight is decidedly janky at the moment. Launchbar is formidably solid and you can ignore all the fancy stuff and be happy with the straight-forward stuff.
@Simon I’m not sure whats happening on your Mac, I am on Sequoia 15.6.1 and Spotlight does highlight the top result when I start typing in the name of an App, allowing me to launch it with a quick Enter key tap.
I looked in System Settings and there is nothing obvious that would set/reset this behavior. Maybe try unticking Applications checkbox, coming back after some time and re-ticking. No idea if that would help but quick and easy worth a try.
I looked at Shortcuts to see if a custom keyboard command could launch an app but couldn’t figure it out. Might be possible with help from smarter TBers. Downside is having to remember key commands for various apps.
As this Topic continues, might be some App launcing software ideas pop up. I thought there were some simple Spotlight alternatives.
I am using Launchbar for many years but am not a power user and its 35 quid price is not cheap.
Try it with a doc. On some docs it works, on others it doesn’t. These are simple TextEdit docs which otherwise show up just fine in Spotlight. Only some, for reasons I just cannot figure out, do not get auto-selected like the others.
LaunchBar is out of the question for aforementioned reasons. And Alfred I cannot configure to show a FileMaker Pro doc sitting in a folder it otherwise finds just fine. Ugh.
Right about Documents. Only for apps are results automatically highlighted on my machine, allowing quick launching. For Docs, and pretty much anything else, there is a web browser icon and the search term with an arrow pointing up and right as the first result, also not highlighted. So one has to then mouse or trackpad down to the item. I tried tab, but that highlights the browser item then another tab goes back to the search term. Arrow key will highlight the results below browser.
Maybe there is a Terminal command to get rid of this web browser result in Spotlight.
I have specifically deselected Websites to ensure that my local Spotlight searches don’t get polluted with garbage (why would I search locally for the thing you search using a web browser? silly MS-esque malakrey). Nevertheless, I cannot get certain docs to auto-select even when they are correctly spelled, end up being the top suggestion, or in fact the only suggestion. It works with docs, not with others. And for the life of me I cannot figure out what distinguishes the two groups.
There might be a business reason why they put a web search as top result for lots of queries.
I read recently about searching on the Mac, on Oakley’s site, and web search has long been a functionality. But as u point out, I would use a browser rather than a computer’s search feature. Maybe I’m old school, but that’s what I expect my computer’s searching function to do: search the local content.
Lack of ability to fine tune Spotlights functionality and inconsistent results led me to LaunchBar.