Apple Has a Spotlight Problem And Needs To Fix It

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Apple has some big problems with a fundamental feature of macOS, SPOTLIGHT. Let's talk about it.

Now a primary part of macOS is Spotlight.  It's both the engine with which you search for files and other things on your Mac and also it's a menu where you access that search. With macOS Tahoe Spotlight is even more prominent that it was before which only highlights its problems. 

So here I'm using Spotlight with Command Space. This brings up Spotlight Search Menus which now in Tahoe has got different sections so you can focus on various things. Or you can just use the main Spotlight Search and search for something, like say a file and get all sorts of results here. You can see how it's working well for me at the moment. But a big problem for Spotlight is it all too often doesn't work very well. If you look at Apple's discussion forum. If you look at the comments at my website. If you look at Reditt and other places you'll find there are plenty of times that Spotlight isn't finding files even when they search with the exact name of the file and they can see it's right there. This happens if they are using Spotlight through the Spotlight Menu or if they're in Finder and they use the Search feature here which is also using the Spotlight Index to find what they want. 

Now Spotlight occasionally not working for people isn't something new in macOS Tahoe. It's been around for years and when it happens Apple usually just advises people to rebuild their Spotlight Index. But  it's definitely happening way too often.  Apple needs to fix whatever bugs there are in Spotlight that prevent it from having a valid index. At this point I even say it should be priority number one for macOS and perhaps there should even be some sort of background task that looks at Spotlight and makes sure it is working. That obvious files are found in the Spotlight Index and if not should be repairing Spotlight in the background without the user having to do anything.

Now whether or not Apple can fix the bugs with this there should be an easier way for you to manually rebuild the Spotlight Index. Right now Apple recommends on their website a way to do it that's not obvious. They have you rebuilding the Spotlight Index by going into System Settings. If I do it here I go into System Settings and I look for Spotlight on the left. Then I go to the bottom here to Search, Privacy. Then here is where you can exclude things from Spotlight They want you to add your whole Home folder to this and then remove it as a way to rebuild Spotlight. But it shouldn't be that convoluted. You can do it in Terminal using the mdutil command like this and then entering  your password. But you shouldn't have to do that either. It's really way past time for Apple to actually add a section to Spotlight in System Settings where you can both test the Spotlight Index and rebuild it. Adding two simple buttons in System Settings under Spotlight, one to test the Spotlight Index that should look at either all the files or maybe a sample of them just to see whether or not Spotlight Index is complete. That makes sense. Then have a Rebuild Button there so you can trigger the rebuild without having to know the secret way to do it. Then perhaps here, as well, they can actually have the progress there showing you how it is doing. When you do read index it show read index in an intelligent way. It should look at apps first. There are not that many of them. It should be able to quickly reindex, starting with the apps, so you can use Spotlight to launch apps. Then it should look at files in the most obvious places, like your Documents folder and Desktop folder so it gets those. Only going to  files like in your Library and other places later on.

It's going to take a long time to reindex everything but there is no reason it can't be done in an order that's smart so even after you start a reindex you can use Spotlight for most things right away. Now in addition to that under Search, Privacy now you can add things you don't want to appear in Spotlight. This needs to be improved as well. First of all you add folders and files to this but adding files usually doesn't work. It only works if you add folders to it. For instance, now if I do Command Space and then Command 1 you get Applications. I may want to remove some of these applications so they don't appear here in this list. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to actually remove these items. You should be able to go in here and add them like this. I understand that some of these are packages which look like folders and that's why they are not particularly working there. But even regular apps, like this, will not then be removed. You should be able to remove individual files, like apps, so they don't appear in Spotlight. In addition to that you should be able to remove file types as well. So if you have an app that is creating a ton of files of some special datatype, you should be able to say Files with this Extension shouldn't appear in Spotlight Index. Plus right in Spotlight, particularly when you're looking at apps, you should be able to Control click on an app, like this, and select right here in the Context Menu that you want to remove this item from Spotlight Index. Or at least remove it from appearing here in a Spotlight Search. This will improve the App section of Spotlight if nothing else. 

The next problem with Spotlight is that it is often too slow. When you search for something it sometimes takes a few seconds to appear. If you search for an app it sometimes takes a few seconds for that appear as well. Those are actually very fast response times. Sometimes it takes longer. A lot of you know this pain. It shouldn't take time for Spotlight results, especially for apps. Spotlight often the app or file isn't there by the time you get to the Return Key and the impression is that your Mac and macOS and Spotlight are all very slow. It's just Spotlight that's slow but it shouldn't be. This needs to be worked on at least for launching apps. 

Another big problem with Spotlight is the Recents List here in the Finder. Now you may think this doesn't have anything to do with Spotlight. But it's using the Spotlight Index to find the files you most recently opened. The problem is that many files that you expect to see here have never been opened. They have no Date Last Opened so they don't appear here in Recents. Like a file that you downloaded or a file that you created by exporting from an app. If you look here in Downloads you'll see the Date Added is the key date for these. Even if you have created your own Saved Search or Smart Folder for recents, the date last opened and the date added is two separate things there in addition to the Date Created and the Date Modified. What you should be able to do with the Spotlight Search is search for Last Date or Recent Date which takes a look at Date Created, Date Modified, Date Last Opened and Date Added and it is the most recent of those four. Nothing new needs to be added to the Spotlight Index. It's just that you should be able to search the Spotlight Index for which is the most recent of those four have Recent Date or Last Date here as the results for Recents and then the Recents List, built into macOS, should then display files using that date. That way you can see downloaded files, exported files, and opened files all together here in Recents and you'll get exactly what you expect when you go here. Plus you'll be able to use that recent date in your own searches, saved searches, and smart  folders. 

In short there are six things that Apple needs to do:

1) they should fix whatever the bugs are that make spotlight break so often for people.

2) they should make it really easy to Reindex it if you need to. 

3) when it reindexes it should give priority to some kinds of files like Apps. 

4) you would be able to exclude not just folders but individual files and file types with the Spotlight Index, 

     especially apps to make the Spotlight Menu more useful.

5) it should work faster so you can launch apps without any perceived delay

6) you should be able to Search using the most recent of the created, modified, open, added dates to have

     more useful searches and also improve the Recents List. 

Here are two other things Apple should add. The path for the file should also be stored in the Spotlight  Index. So you can actually use the path as something you search for. So you can look for files in more than just one folder or exclude a folder from a search. Now really that's going to cause trouble especially if someone is going to take a folder filled with files to a different location. The paths have to be updated. But it should still be done even if there is a little more overhead involved. It just comes up too often that somebody wants to look in say a few folders rather than one folder for a special file or exclude a folder or two in the search. 

Finally, now that we have four different sections in the Spotlight Menu there should be keyboard shortcuts for each one of those. Right now if you go to System Settings and then keyboard and then Keyboard Shortcuts and then you go to Spotlight you have your primary Spotlight search keyboard shortcut, Command Space, and you can create your own only for the first section, Show App. But there should also be one for Files, Action, the Clipboard. Just give us three more options here and allow us to decided whether or not we want to have a keyboard shortcut that goes right to it. 

I know this isn't my typical video where I show you how to do things. But if you're frustrated by one of these deficiencies in Spotlight at least you now know you're not alone. You can go to apple.com/feedback    /macOS and this is where you can actually request new features from Apple. So if you want some or all of these things you may want to use that form. I think that if Apple would improve the reliability and speed of Spotlight it would go a long way of improving how people feel about macOS. Thanks for watching.