How to remove old entries from Spotlight search on macOS Tahoe?

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Level 1

94 points

How to remove old entries from Spotlight search on macOS Tahoe?

Hello,

I see five very old entries in the list of "results from apps" (Settings -> Spotlight; I use MacOS 26), e.g. com.flexibits.fantastical2.mac or com.surteesstudios.Bartender.

But I uninstalled these app long time ago, e.g. Fantastical 2 (it must have been many years).

How can I delete these "extensions"? Where are they stored?

I searched with EasyFind and HoudahSpot but no positive result. And I already contacted the developers of some of these apps but they could not really help either.

Takk,

Claus

[Edited by Moderator]

Original Title: Old entries in Spotlight settings

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 26.0

Posted on Sep 22, 2025 11:41 AM

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Answer 1

clausimausi Author

Level 1

94 points

Sep 24, 2025 10:58 PM in response to jonathanpaulpano

I got an answer from Flexibits (support from Fantastical):

However our team has let me know that they believe this is a system issue. The list from your screenshot usually shows the name of the app, not the bundle ID. They believe the system may have cached the information somewhere and now can't pull the app name off of the info.plist (because there is no info.plist since the app was uninstalled). Unfortunately in this case, there is not anything we can do since it is a system issue and not a Fantastical issue.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,126 points

Sep 22, 2025 12:26 PM in response to clausimausi

What are your searching. The whole Spotlight window might shed more light, but it is probably your configuration data for those apps. That stuff is normally in Application Support as noted by neuroanatomist.

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Answer 3

clausimausi Author

Level 1

94 points

Sep 22, 2025 1:18 PM in response to neuroanatomist

I did this already ( ~/Library) , but there is no such file.

EasyFind found some other files (e.g. in ~/Library) belonging to e.f. Bartender, I deleted these but this entry in Spotlight is still here.

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Answer 4

clausimausi Author

Level 1

94 points

Sep 22, 2025 1:41 PM in response to Barney-15E

Barney-15E wrote:

The whole Spotlight window might shed more light, ...

Which info would be helpful?

I guess these orphaned items are something like extensions, old and from some years ago. And the details from the Spotlight settings are not related to the "files" (in case these are files).

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,126 points

Sep 22, 2025 1:46 PM in response to clausimausi

Barney-15E wrote:

The whole Spotlight window might shed more light, ...

Which info would be helpful?

The actual search term and which mode of Spotlight.

If you are searching all of Spotlight, those files may contain the search term.

If you cmd+click one of them, it will open the enclosing folder.

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Answer 6

Oct 6, 2025 3:51 PM in response to clausimausi

Update: It's still not fixed. Worse, I uninstalled Facebook Messenger that came in the App Store because Meta doesn't push updates regularly in there and downloaded the same app through Meta's website. Now, I have 2 Messenger entries, as you see in the screenshot. The one in the App Store lingered and is named as the bundle identifier com.facebook.archon. I even wrote them in the feedback assistant app, but if Apple is not even responding here, I will not even expect a reply from their feedback assistant app.

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 7

Nov 4, 2025 6:09 PM in response to clausimausi

I tried everything last night. The OnlyX programme hides all the files. Any related name needs to be checked. This file pops up everywhere and then deletes itself. It's incredibly annoying. I downloaded it from the App Store so this shouldn't be an issue. I'm using macOS 26.1.

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