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Spotlight keyboard shortcuts on Mac. On your Mac, you can quickly search with Spotlight using the keyboard shortcuts below. Action. Shortcut. Open or close the Spotlight window. Command-Space bar. Open a search result in Quick Look. Space bar. Switch between the search field and the search results.
- Apple Support (UK)
Click at the top right of the screen then start typing. You...
- Apple Support (UK)
Click at the top right of the screen then start typing. You can also press the Spotlight key (F4) on your keyboard. With Live Text, Spotlight can search for text in images (available in select languages). Tip: Press Command–Space bar to show or hide the Spotlight search field.
Dec 16, 2020 · 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.
Aug 28, 2023 · Launch Spotlight by pressing Command+Space Bar or using the search icon in the top right of your screen. You can also launch it by pressing F4 on the function keys. Use Spotlight to quickly...
- Getting Started: Looking for Files
- Searching for Files With Natural Language
- Take It to the Finder
- Spotlight Internet Tricks
- Customize Spotlight Content and Order
- A Complete List of Spotlight Keyboard Shortcuts
- The Best Tech Newsletter Around
The basic functionality of Spotlight is instant search of every file on your computer. A very simple use for this is to launch software: just type the name of the program.
Results will pop up instantly as you type, and you can hit "Enter" right away to launch an app or game. It feels silly at first, but it's actually faster than clicking an icon somewhere---you never even have to take your hands off the keyboard. Once you get used to it, you will seriously wonder why you ever opened software any other way.
You can also use this to launch individual panels in the System Preferences, again just by typing the name.
This becomes really useful when you need to quickly find a file. If you want to quickly find a photo you took in Paris, just hit Command+Space and search for the word "Paris."
In the above example, you'll notice that music came up before photos. No matter: you can use the up and down arrow keys to quickly jump from item to item. As you scroll through the photos, you'll see thumbnails in the right panel.
Searches look at filenames, but in the case of documents, Spotlight also looks inside the file. For example: way back in college, I helped publish a parody publication that was "written" by a cat named Muffles. All these years later, searching Spotlight for "Muffles" brings up the document, even though "muffles" is nowhere in the filename.
Related: How to Use Natural Language Search in OS X's Spotlight
Spotlight is useful enough for simple searches alone, but you can go deeper by using natural language. What does this mean? That you can type surprisingly specific queries and get the results you'd expect. For example: type "pictures from december 2015" and you will see only photos from that specific month.
You can use similar language to find documents from last week, videos from last Tuesday, or applications installed in March.
Related: How to Use Natural Language Search in OS X's Spotlight
As we said before: you can see any search result in the Finder by pressing Command+Enter while it's highlighted. But it's also possible to bring your searches to the Finder, where there's a much more nuanced set of controls. To do this, scroll down to the bottom of your results, then click "Show all in Finder."
If you'd rather not scroll down to the bottom of the list, you can use the keyboard shortcut Option+Command+Space instead---this will launch the Finder instantly.
From here you can browse through all of the results, or you can further refine things by clicking the "+" button at top-right. This will allow you to add additional queries.
If you use a search like this often, you can even hit the "Save" button at top-right to add it to your Finder sidebar. That way you can see the results anytime.
So far we've focused on Spotlight's local capabilities, but it also offers a lot of Internet content. For example, if you want the weather, just type "Weather."
Or, if you prefer, you can also request the weather in a particular place by typing, for example, "weather in buffalo NY."
The trick also works for sports scores. Type "NHL scores" and you'll see a schedule for today and a few recent scores.
There are a few more tricks like this. For example, type "define" followed by any word to see a quick definition from the web.
You can also use Spotlight as a quick calculator.
There are a few more features hidden here: stock prices, currency conversion, online videos, even results from Maps if you're looking for the location of a nearby business. It's not quite as feature complete as Siri in macOS, but it's got a lot of the same features, so give it a shot. Apple seems to add new features with every release.
Maybe you're not a huge fan of these Internet results, or any particular category of results. No problem: just open up the System Preferences, then head to the Spotlight section. From here you can disable any category of results
Related: How to Use Natural Language Search in OS X's Spotlight
If you installed Xcode at some point, your results might have all kinds of system files that aren't really useful to you. We've explained how to disable those developer results, and it might be a touch more complicated than you'd like if you deleted XCode.
You can also disable specific folders from coming up in search queries, by heading to the "Privacy" tab.
To really get the most out of Spotlight, you should really learn all of its keyboard shortcuts. It makes browsing search results a lot easier. Happily, there's an official list of Spotlight keyboard shortcuts on the Apple website; here's a quick summary.
•Command+Space will launch Spotlight
•The Right Arrow will complete the search using the currently selected result, turning your query into the full name of that item.
•The Up and Down Arrows let you browse through the list.
•Command Up and Command Down let you jump between categories of results.
•Enter allows you to open the currently selected result.
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- Justin Pot
- Former News Editor
Mar 9, 2012 · These are the most basic shortcuts to use Spotlight: Open Spotlight menu – Command+Space. Open Spotlight in the Finder – Command+Option+Space. Clear Spotlight search box – Escape. Close Spotlight menu – Escape twice.
May 15, 2021 · One of the basic yet essential Spotlight tricks is to use a keyboard shortcut to invoke Spotlight Search from anywhere on the system. While the default way to do this, preferred by most...
