Hi all,
I used to be able to quickly open applications on my Macbook M1 2020 by searching for them using Spotlight search. But ever since I updated to Monterey the applications do not show up at the top of the search, I have to scroll down at least 15 entries to open the application I searched for.
Any ideas how to fix this? It's very very irritating.
Best regards
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.0
Hey jak.son48,
It appears that when trying to use Spotlight, what you're searching for doesn't appear near the top. To start, you could see if restarting your MacBook Air may help resolve this issue: Log out, sleep, wake, restart, or shut down your Mac It may seem like a simple step, but it can sometimes resolve issues.
Another step you can take is to reindex Spotlight, which you can see how to do here: Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support Let us know how those steps go or if you've already tried those.
Take care!
They offered a clean-reinstall.
I am planning to do it while I am in chat with Mac Support through my iphone.
I will let you know when I did it. (Planning for this week).
mmendescortes wrote:
IMHO this is a experience breaking issue, if I wanted a bad app search I would go to Windows or Linux... The only reason I pay for an expensive Mac is the OS and if the OS doesn't save me time and effort it loses it's appeal...
Spotlight isn't specifically an app launcher. Its primary purpose is to find content in files. It works great as an app launcher, and is really the only thing I use. I rarely find a collision between an app name and content. I generally use abbreviations for apps, like "du" for Disk Utility, "am" for Activity Monitor--even using am doesn't cause a collision. It also seems to learn which app is supposed to match which abbreviation. However, it always wants me to open Keynote if I type "key". "ka" works well for Keychain Access, but now that we have Passwords system prefs, "pas" works.
I have found times when Spotlight loses its mind. It won't return an app at all. Usually, that is right after it has to reindex for some reason. If it doesn't fix itself in a while, I reindex using sudo mdutil -E / in Terminal.
If you only want it to find Applications, disable all of the other categories in the Spotlight preferences.
Spotlight search not showing applications first since Monterey update
