How do I change the language used by Spotlight to show Definitions?

Is Apple working on this? What can we do to ask for this to be solved?

User `TheMainEvent` figured out that spotlight is using the keyboard layout instead of the language set. Excellent find but this is very, very annoying!

I feel powerless 😟

Launch the Dictionary in your Applications folder and select Dictionary Preferences

You can select the Dictionaries that you want definitions from in there.

Sorry, just reread your post

You appear to have all your settings correct.

You could try turning off your Spotlight Location Services to see if that is the reason why you are getting these results.

System Preferences > Security & Privacy - Privacy Pane

Under Location Services - System Services - Details, and uncheck Safari and Spotlight Suggestions.

I can't imagine why this setting should have any effect on you Dictionary setting, unless your location is close a Spanish speaking location.

Out of interest, if you look-up a work in Safari with the three-finger tap, what definitions are displayed there?

I'm having the same issue, albeit in French. Is there really no fix for this problem?

I have a temporary solution. Just simply move " /Library/Dictionaries/(**dict you hate**).dictionary " to anywhere else. But don't delete it in case you might use it later on. Hope there was any other solutions better than this.

I've been having this issue (in French) and I've been looking around for a solution for quite a while. The spotlight dictionary will change depending on the language of your keyboard (mine is set to Canadian French). Switching to U.S. will only show the definitions in English. Bit annoying, but at least I found out why it's been doing this.

Same problem. I've installed additional Russian-English dictionaries, but they do not appear in the spotlight search. I've even tried to remove all other dictionaries except these ones, but in such case Spotlight simply stop showing definitions. What I would like to achieve eventually is to enable Apple dictionary, my English-Russian dictionaries and Wikipedia, but it seem simply not possible at the moment. Dictionary configuration does not influence Spotlight behavior (

prokher wrote:

Same problem.

3rd party dictionaries may be a different problem, I don’t think they ever work in Spotlight. You can ask Apple to change that via

http://www.apple.com/feedback

You deserve a donut for discovering this. By the way, this is really annoying for users. Cant understand why Apple uses keyboard layout instead of language definitions.

I have the same issue, but translations are in Dutch (I think). System is in Finnish, keyboard layout is Finnish, primary language is Finnish, dictionary is in English and I live nowhere near Netherlands. Still it translates English to Dutch.

I have the same issue (french), I solved mine by going to System Preference -> Language & Region. Then I delete all the Preferred Language except English. It works 🙂