OS X Yosemite: How to Use the New, More Powerful Spotlight Search

Apple

Apple’s latest desktop operating system, OS X Yosemite, won’t officially come out until sometime this fall. But now that its public beta is open, both developers and a large number of Mac owners are able to use a preview version of the landmark OS.

For those who’ve just started using the beta, or are just anticipating its launch later this year, we’ve got some tips on how to best take advantage of the redesigned OS and its many new features. In this edition, we take on Apple’s systemwide search, Spotlight.

Spotlight always felt like a secondary, behind-the-scenes tool in previous versions of OS X, but with Yosemite it’s grown into a key feature. Previously, when you summoned Spotlight with a command-spacebar press (or a click of the magnifying glass icon in the upper right of the homescreen), the Spotlight search field popped up in the upper right, politely out of the way of the rest of your desktop experience. Not anymore. Now, a much larger Spotlight search bar pops up front and center, cursor blinking before the words “Spotlight Search.”

There’s reason for the (forgive me) spotlight on Spotlight. It is a much more powerful search tool than it was in Mavericks or previous versions of OS X, largely thanks to a much wider pool it can source answers from. Spotlight now turns up results from your installed apps, Mail, Messages, your calendar, saved files, images, folders, your bookmarks and web history, dictionary, and even the web (through Bing), Maps, the App Store, and iTunes Store. Hits are listed in a panel on the left, organized by category, with a most relevant “Top Hit” automatically selected at the top of this list. To the right, a QuickLook panel offers a look at what that Top Hit (or any other option you select from the left panel) holds. It takes a few seconds for this preview to load, but if you’re looking for a particular email for example, it’s certainly faster than hopping into the mail app or browser then doing a search.

Screenshot: WIRED

Here are a few examples of how it works: A search for “kitten” yielded an iTunes Store top hit of a band/album called Kitten; the Wikipedia entry for kitten; a handful of links from my web history that involved kittens; and lastly, a Dictionary definition for the word. If I just search the letter “C,” the top hit is Google Chrome, followed by other applications like Calendar, HipChat, and Contacts, then system locations that start with the letter C like iCloud, CDs and DVDs, and Mission Control, then contacts that start with C, and events and reminders (cat food, cat litter, cucumber) that start with that letter. If I search a specific location like “Mexico Au Parc,” a local burrito joint, the top hit comes from Maps, and it shows a closeup of the business’s location followed by information pooled from Yelp like its rating, photos, hours, and reviews, along with buttons you can press to get directions to or from the location.

If the results order that pops-up doesn’t satisfy you—say, if you don’t want iTunes Store results to be your top hit— you can customize the order in which results display (and where results are sourced from). Just go to System Preferences > Spotlight, and drag and drop categories in the order you want them listed, or uncheck them if you don’t want Spotlight to search those locations.

Spotlight is poised to make search and learning on your Mac faster and more streamlined than ever before. It also feels like a launchpad for even faster voice-based search in the future if Apple ever decides to bring a form of Siri to the desktop. For now though, hitting command and spacebar to get this level of search results is truly time saving, and I’m excited to start using the final, finished version when it debuts this fall.