How do I use Spotlight on my Mac? Use it to find apps, files, definitions, and more!
Spotlight helps you find anything on your Mac. It indexes the contents of your Mac's hard drive to make it easier to find documents, emails, apps, music, contacts, and other information. It can also help you find information on the web, perform equations, and more.
- How to access and use Spotlight in macOS
- How to customize Spotlight search results in macOS
- How to hide content from Spotlight search in macOS
How to access and use Spotlight in macOS
- Click on the Spotlight button in the menu bar, it looks like a magnifying glass. Or, use the Command - Space keyboard shortcut. The Spotlight search field will appear in the middle of your screen.
Type in your search query. Spotlight will return results as you type.
If Spotlight isn't finding what you're looking for, you can adjust its search results to be optimized for what you need. You can also exclude specific locations of your hard disk to prevent Spotlight from searching information you'd prefer to keep private.
How to customize Spotlight search results
- Click on the menu button on the top left of your screen.
- Click System Preferences.
Click on Spotlight.
Click the Checkbox beside the category to change what Spotlight will show you. If it has a checkmark, then those results will be displayed; if it doesn't, then those results will not be displayed.
How to hide content from Spotlight search
If you have sensitive documents in a certain location that you never want to be searched, you can tell Spotlight to not look in those locations.
- Click on the menu button on the top left of your screen.
- Click System Preferences.
Click on Spotlight.
Click on the Privacy tab.
- Click on the add button. It's the + sign at the bottom left of the window.
- Click the item you don't want Spotlight to search for.
- Click Choose.
Questions?
Need anymore help with Spotlight? Let us know in the comments below.
Reader comments
How to use Spotlight on the Mac
Now I know why so many Mac users hate windows. If you need a how-to for spotlight, you'll never make in an advanced OS!
This tutorial is for new-to-Mac users & shows a few tips they may not have known. Search in windows is still horrendous, even with indexing turned on, compared to what spotlight has been since its inception. Especially now that windows goes to the internet before the PC.
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Your comment implies that Windows is more of an "advanced OS" than macOS, which it isn't. If anything it's equally advanced
As a new first time owner of an OSX MacBook Pro retina I enjoy these small how to articles. Keep them coming. They are very helpful.
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Even though I did know this from iPhone and iPad I thought it appropriate since you took the time to write it that I take the time to thank you. :)
"Spotlight helps you find anything on your Mac."
... except system files & a handful of secretly excluded utility apps, like screen share. While it does make sense to hide these things from "uniformed individuals" why can't I check a box to allow all files to be indexed & searchable?
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I find Spotlight unusable for searching for documents on my Mac as I will often have multiple versions and Spotlight gives no indication of which version of the file. Alfred by contrast shows the file location beneath the name so I can be confident I have the right document.
Hold down the Command key and the path will be shown at the bottom of the preview pane. Command plus Return will open a Finder window with your file, image, etc.
Thanks - that helps ! Not quite as good as Alfred but may help me move across to Spotlight.
That's a great tip to fix one of the things I've always hated about Spotlight. Why showing the file path isn't default I have no idea.
Now if only Apple could speed Spotlight up to where it's actually faster than I can find files by hand.
Yea, thanks for the Command-Space shortcut, because before literally right now there's no way I'd have used Spotlight on my Mac, ever, because I don't think accessibility is that great for it. I didn't know that combo, but I still doubt I'd use it because it's used in other applications I use for other stuff (not Mac Apps, Windows Apps - i.e. Developer Tools) and it's not something that will ever become muscle memory as a result.
Hate to draw comparisons, but one of the things I love about Windows is that you simply press the "Windows Key" and started typing. Apple needs to make it that easy.
I think it would help accessibility of this tool if Apple would either:
1. Assign one of the Function Keys to bring up Spotlight (F5 and F6 are currently unused on the Apple Keyboard for "fn"), or
2. Put Spotlight on the left hand side of the Dock.
Really, that tiny icon in the menu bar. A two button press to invoke it. I find that to be very bad accessibility for functionality to crucial to the user experience (searching for stuff on your PC - not even yet considering web searches since most people will do that in their web browser).
Also, they need to do something about Spotlight on iOS. It's pretty useless in that if you input a query it simply says "Search the Web" or "Search Wikipedia" and pressing the Enter button on the soft keyboard does absolutely nothing. I basically run all of my searches through the web browser on both platforms.
I typed in "El Capit" on my iMac and it bought up personal financial documents that had nothing to do with "El Capit" and no where in those documents does that string appear (maybe it's just searching for instances of "el" and "capita" within the document, but that does not happen on my Windows Machine with Microsoft's Desktop Search (which also indexes these documents just as well)).