How to use Spotlight in macOS Tahoe
Shine a light on productivity
· TechRadarHow Tos By Lloyd Coombes published 15 March 2026
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In case you’ve not updated yet, macOS Tahoe is here, and it’s packing more than just a new Liquid Glass style for your Mac computer.
Aside from the arrival of the Journal app and a customizable Control Center, there’s a big new update for Spotlight. Apple’s launcher has been relatively unchanged for years now, and many users will no doubt have gravitated toward third-party alternatives like Alfred and Raycast.
Still, this latest update adds a lot of power-user functionality to the long-running tool, and I’ve put together this handy guide to help you make the most of it.
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Set up your keyboard shortcut
Before we do any tweaking of Spotlight, you’ll need to know how to enable it. By default, it’s CMD and Space on your Mac’s keyboard, but if it doesn’t open then you’ll need to adjust that setting.
To do so, open System Settings and search ‘Spotlight’, then look in the sidebar for Keyboard settings. Make sure the ‘Show Spotlight search’ checkbox is ticked.
Launch some apps
It’s not new functionality, but if you’ve not used Spotlight before, then you might be surprised how much quicker it is to open apps using your keyboard as opposed to grabbing your mouse and navigating to the relevant folder.
Simply start typing, and you’ll be presented with a list of options. Move down with the arrow keys and hit return to jump into any of them.
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