Apple usedWWDC 2025to introduce a number of new features – a completely overhauled design language, live translation features accessible across all of its operating systems, and multiple AI-adjacent new skills – but one of the most important was the company’s rework of Spotlight.
Spotlightis Apple’s name for the built-in search field that you can access on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS to search for a file, a specific app, or information from the web. The feature is useful across all the company’s devices, but is particularly key on Macs, where it’s one of the simplest and most direct ways to find things without jumping into the file hierarchies of Finder. Apple has added small features to Spotlight over time, letting the search field answer math problems, provide dictionary definitions, and pull up basic Wikipedia information. InmacOS 26, it’ll go further, letting Spotlight perform select functionality in apps without even opening it, calling to mind Apple’spromised changes to Siri, and potentially showing a simpler way Apple’s devices could get smarter.
5 top reveals from WWDC 2025: Windows Vista-like glass redesign, Mac-style iPadOS changes, and more
Apple has announced a slew of new features across its portfolio of operating systems.
Spotlight will soon do a lot more than search
The feature is becoming something like a command line
During the macOS Tahoe section of Apple’s keynote, the company demoed the new Spotlight taking on expected tasks like pulling up search results, and even displaying apps that are only available through a connected iPhone overiPhone Mirroring. But the new Spotlight can also take action for you, too, leveraging the features of apps without having to open them. That could be adding an event to your calendar, playing a podcast, running a Shortcut (now with the ability to tap into Apple Intelligence models) or, as Apple demoed, sending a message or email without having to lift your hands off the keyboard.
Spotlight shows a more hands-on way the basic concept could work, and honestly, it might be easier to understand and trust.
This new part of Spotlight relies on the company’sApp Intentsframework, which lets developers identify content and actions inside of apps and make them usable in everything from Spotlight to the Action Button on the iPhone and Apple Watch Ultra. Apple originally pitched App Intents as being the key ingredient that would make its updated version of Siri work, which can similarly take action inside of apps with a simple voice command, and can reference the personal context of messages and emails to make more informed decisions.
Appledelayed the updated version of Siriin March 2025, but Spotlight shows a more hands-on way the basic concept could work, and honestly, it might be easier to understand and trust. Especially given the lackluster performance of Siri historically.
With iOS 26, Apple is finally taking the iPhone’s phone app seriously
By far, iOS 26’s most useful new features are Call Screening and Hold Assist – here’s why.
Apple’s “sherlocking” an experience Mac power users are familiar with
Spotlight is a lot like Raycast and Alfred
That this new Spotlight feels easier to grasp or maybe more trustworthy than a voice assistant is based in part on there being several notable apps that have attempted to do the same thing. Apple is pretty clearly trying to copy or emulate the features of apps likeRaycastorAlfred, which add a search field and command line that can similarly carry out the functionality of some apps.
At their most basic, Alfred or Raycast replace Spotlight, often surfacing information more naturally or searching across a wider selection of information than macOS might do naturally. But they’re also capable of a lot more. Alfred can save snippets of text, access your clipboard history, control your music app and run workflows of different actions across your computer.Raycast goes even further, replacing features like the macOS emoji picker, Apple’s window management tools, and plenty of first-party AI chatbot apps. It also supports an ever-growing library of first and third-party extensions that can work with your favorite apps and services to get things done, not unlike the new Spotlight.
Both Raycast and Alfred are still more flexible than what Apple has planned for Spotlight. They also have communities supporting them.
Besides direct integration with macOS, the new Spotlight might be able to run more of its processes locally, but the tools seem remarkably similar to each other. For anyone who hasn’t used Raycast or Alfred, Apple’s putting a friendlier face on what can be a pretty technical process. And if you only use the basics of Alfred or Raycast, it might be enticing enough to switch, too. Unless you’re looking at your screen, you don’t know if the voice assistant understood you or if it actually did what it said it was going to do. There’s more trust in typing for what you want and seeing that it’s doing what it says it will.
Apple doesn’t need to complicate automating your computer
We might be better off typing out what we need
It remains to be seen whether Apple is able to ship its revamped Siri. The company is reportedly eyeingan iOS 26.4 update in 2026as the likely time when its new voice assistant debuts. In the meantime, macOS 26 will launch in the fall and give users a taste of automation and prompting that might be satisfying enough. Do we really need Siri in that case? I’m not sure, but I’m excited to see if Spotlight does the trick.
While you’re waiting for Apple to roll out its updates, there aremacOS appsthat you may try right now that could vastly change how you use your computer. And if you’re specifically looking to add on new utilities like Spotlight, Pocket-lint hasjust the list for you.
