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Comment by mchusma | Hacker News Reader

Apple's search is so comically bad. For example, I can click on my applications, and I have an app called Chess. I can often type letters C-H-E-S-S and have it not show the Chess app. This is inside the applications folder!

Many people have complained before. Honestly I ONLY search for app names in spotlight search or application window, it should be trivial to make it actually work. Maybe i just need to vibecode some alternative search bar :(

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It’s so much worse than that. This happens to me on a daily basis with both MacOS and iOS. Say I’m searching for Chess, I’ll get to the C-H and it’ll show the Chess app, but enter that next -E and it’s totally gone. It feels like the system is designed like “Well, I showed them Chess when they entered CH, but they kept typing, so they must not actually want Chess.” This ends up breaking for me like 95% of the time, and the only way around it is to search like “C”…wait for results…”H”…wait for results…etc. It’s maddening.

This, and then, if you notice, and backspace to remove the 'e', it doesn't put chess back into the search results, since it figures that everything that matches 'che' also matches 'ch', and so doesn't update it. Sometimes, if you add the 'e' again, it _will_ find chess, sometimes you need to type the 's', or even the final 's' before it gives you chess back again.

And sometimes, it finds what you want, but before you can select it, it decides that it has found something better, and places that in the place where you wanted to select, causing you to select the wrong thing. And then it thinks that because you selected this, it must be what you want, and starts to push it to the top…

Search is definitely frustrating.

Weird, the same stupid crap happens with Windows. I’ve had to learn the exact N character search to find the things I use often; any more or less and the result with that name is buried. It’s like Microsoft and Apple are just pip installing same broken search package.

On Windows I use PowerToys' Alt+Space command bar which does a much better job. In fact, it's the only search I use on Windows.

I switched to Everything for search a while ago and haven’t looked back. For the start menu I replace it with Open Shell, which seems to find apps much more reliably.

Good info, I’ll check it out. Thanks!

Always turn off searching the internet as much as possible on both. Helps a ton. I think I set both windows and iOS to only search local applications and settings

I don't find this to be the case at all.

Firefox's "awesome bar" behaves the same way. I guess it's either inherent to the problem somehow, or else everyone is sharing a library (unlikely), or else everyone just makes the same mistakes.

It's worse than this! You Type C-H-E then you go to press enter, and it changes the results as you're pressing it, opening the wrong thing! I've turned off all the search targets, except for applications and folders.

Absolutely. The mac spotlight search / bar was one of my favourite features, maybe 10 years ago? But now it’s useless.

It also has some strange behaviour when it’s not in focus, but hasn’t been closed.

I just leave every application open and command tab to them now.

I found people suggesting Raycast to replace Spotlight search and that's been far better and more consistent for me since I switched.

Changing the results just when you are going to action on them is a fundamental UX sin.

Yes. "UI Speed" should be a configurable thing, so that if the UI changes as you're choosing an item, it acts instead on _what was there_ at a brief moment in the past, e.g. 20-50ms ago.

I'm hit by this problem often. I wonder why UI updates which could well be incremental instead just replace the whole results from under your fingers!

Don't worry, airdrop does it too! I've accidentally sent airdrop requests to strangers from their profile picture moving under my finger as I'm approaching to touch someone else's. The single most idiotic design I've ever seen in UI. I don't use airdrop for anything sensitive anymore, obviously.

I have the same problem when i touch a result and it changes the result line at the exact moment.

This one drives me particularly crazy.

I really wish apps stopped doing that "search on type" thing in search boxes. You either need to have only a couple miliseconds of response time, or you need to confirm that you want the search process to start. Or maybe at least have some feedback showing "more content is loading, watch out, don't click".

The amount of misclicks daily because of crappy slow-but-should-be-fast search probably offsets by 10x the amount of time required to hit "enter" for the search to start.

For me search has been that way since the first MacOS 26.0 upgrade and apparently never fixed.

But speaking of quality overall (outside of the search glitch) - I use dual 5k LG monitors with my work MacBook and can get the MacOS Display Manager process to crash if I just enable variable rate refresh and put the computer to sleep, then wake it up. Apparently a known issue for a few years, still not fixed.

> I’ll get to the C-H and it’ll show the Chess app, but enter that next -E and it’s totally gone

It "works" exactly the same on Windows. How is that even possible?

It's probably asynchronous reranking doing something weird. My guess is that the underlying ranking algorithms in these desktop search bars are very ropey, and they can't debug or diagnose because privacy reasons means the developers don't get to see what results were generated for different query/index combos. Also search is probably just not staffed most of the time.

So many platforms with search have a variation of this problem now.

The other issue with Mac search is that it never tells you when it’s done, so you can’t tell if it searched and failed to find something or is still searching.

I find this theory pretty compelling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703471

Maybe they are overthinking it.

Either same guy got promoted over and over again or someone thought we must copy this genius search bar as is

'calc' used to bring up calculator, but now it becomes some widget to calculate distance inside the spotlight box. The worst thing is you can't even backspace out of it.

I'd take the widget! For me typing "calc" finds the "com.apple.calculator" folder. If I continue to "calcu" etc, it suggests "com.apple.ncplugin.calculator" instead. Brilliant intelligence right there.

For me the big one is whenever I type "sys" to get system settings, it pops up for a half second and then for some reason the top result is like "reset some system setting" and then I invariably get flashbanged because it turns off dark mode and there's no confirmation dialogue lmao. Maddening.

Typing “sound” and end up with some obscure sound setting as top option and the general “sound” control panel nowhere to be found. Every time.

I've deactivated every single type of data in Spotlight except Applications. It goes out of its way to still suggest files like C system files or header files, like "system_library.c". It didn't wait for AI to turn against us.

I was trying to see what happens here. It does give the Sound settings panel as the first hit. But when I then press Return, it opens System Settings, but does not actually go to the Sound settings, but General.

Also, search inside the Settings app has been broken for many releases now. I always wonder if anyone inside Apple is actually using macOS or iOS.

I had this problem on Spotlight, I solved it once and never happened to me again, there is a setting to reindex all the files, which solves the issue. On iOS however I still have this problem.

I wish all this shit would just stop trying to search as I’m fucking typing. It’s like that person we all know that can’t hold their tongue for five fucking seconds and let you finish a sentence before the blurt something out.

This seems like a general UI bug.

Q: For those amongst us who are UI experts, what is it called when dynamic lists populate unpredictably while a finger-tap is in-progress?

a) start query and see initial results

b) start finger-navigation, moving finger over initial results

c) start finger-tap descent

d) underlying list is updated, replacing future finger-tap destination's UI element with another

e) finger-tap meets different element than intended

It’s called layout shift.

Than You! Been looking for this. Cheers

I feel attacked, but it’s probably the same reason, we both think we know the answer before you finished.

Ah, but hitting enter now takes you to the top result! Therefore it has to search as you type, so there's something to activate as soon as you hit enter! /s

...I've been seeing this search style in more and more places recently, and I hate it. Let me type my search, then hit enter, then you can go find what I asked for. Don't slow everything down by searching on every character I type.

It’s called incremental search and it’s useful, but only when there’s some debouncing involved and the search results is presented at once or the items are sorted by the order they are found.

The best part is when you click on or press enter when you see "chess", but this is just as "cheese.com" is appearing so you open that instead.

I can't search for Apples own Notes app. I've tried the name in my local language, I've tried the original english name of the app. Nothing. It will show me OneNote which isn't even installed anymore, but not the Notes app. Very strange.

Don't they perform user testing?

- Do "normies" perform better with this behavior?

- Or is the goal to disturb the user and make something impractical like in Google, so that people click on ads? Software has turned into a curse. The machines have risen.

I always assumed that was intentional to save you arriving through options. I find that behaviour quite useful as I can hit anything beginning with CHE just by typing more letters.

I don’t get it. How is it useful that typing CHE you won’t see Chess even though it was visible before you got to type the E?

Because you watch as you type. You may not find it useful, I very much do for apps with colliding names.

>> the only way around it is to search like “C”…wait for results…”H”…wait for results…

Some people don’t like that. I don’t know why you like having to wait but if they showed Chess for CHE you could still find other apps if you kept typing.

Maybe there are also people who like the lottery of results changing the instant you click on the app you want because it adds excitement to their lives.

FWIW, I find if I’m pushing the disk limit, Spotlight search becomes unusable. So I free up ~100GB (easy to do with iOS/Android dev artifacts, emulators, etc.) and then force a Spotlight re-index from the command line:

sudo mdutil -E /

You can check indexing status with:

mdutil -s /

After that it’s usually fine again until I start pushing the disk limit.

Every sibling comment's issues I've experienced. But a reindex after freeing enough disk space seems to be a semi-stable solution for me. If only I could write a tool to remind me to free disk space before it screws up spotlight. It would be nice if MacOS put the index on its own partition.

Exactly this. Spotlight remains the best local search but it falls apart with disk space limits.

Spotlight worked best in OS X 10.4. It was near instantaneous on what is now considered ancient hardware. It's been steadily downhill from there.

Mostly because people still expect to use it to find "Recipe for Egg Salad.docx" without searching the entire Internet or executing some bizarre natural language query.

A common one I hit is "blu" showing bluetooth settings, but "blue" does not. Very frustrating to see the thing you are hoping for popup, but then go away as you type more if its name.

Windows does this, too. So I really wonder how come two companies implemented the same borked behavior.

Android keyboard does that too. When I start typing my email address, for example, the keyboard app suggests the correct email after a few characters, but if I keep typing it disappears from the suggestions.

I have to send a daily email that always has the subject starting with "Work Diary". If I type "W", it doesn't come up. If I type "Wo" it comes up as the 3rd auto-complete suggestion. If I type any more characters, I have to type the entire two words. This is on Android, but I have a feeling it's no better on iOS.

I'd love to know the algorithm they're using for this. Fuzzy search seems like it was a mostly solved problem 20 years ago, and it's definitely worse than it was 10 years ago.

It would be interesting to learn what over engineered solution to fuzzy string matching is being used here to exhibit this behavior, so we never make the same mistake.

I bet it's some obscure MIT/BSD-licensed fuzzy matching library that both macOS and Windows uses.

that space is probably sold to the same ad network by both OSs

Not just operating systems. Try the following on the IMDB app or website.

Search 'True', you'll get True Detective and True Blood show up as the top results. That seems to work well.

But then if you add a space making it 'True ', 'Bill Hader' is the top result!

To be fair "Bill Hader" should be the top result no matter what you type.

People still use IMDB after they introduced mandatory account registration to even see user reviews?

Seems like someone got updated KPIs and decided to try the most ham-fisted enshittification move to raise registrations. Oh, it is now possible again to see about five top reviews per item. Seems like loss of traffic was rough.

Just tried this on iOS 27 and both blu and blue showed me bluetooth settings. I saw someone in a different thread of this discussion mention resetting dictionaries helping with autocorrect, I wonder if there is something that would apply to this situation which helps.

Just do a fresh install every two weeks.

Aah those were the days.

These are too, but those were as well.

KDE gets it right, too.

And it offers me THREE different chess games I could install!

At some point I got the damn Chess app every time I wanted to switch to Chrome. You know, typing cmd-space, ch and enter. I've learned I can't remove Chess from my computer. After numerous incantations of various spells and reboots and updates I think it started working normally again.

Breaking interfaces, Linus Torvalds had something to say about it that Apple should heed.

I struggle daily with Finder's search. It cannot find files in my Downloads folder even if I type the exact name. Do I need to rebuild some index or some other setting?

It couldn't hurt. I don't have problems like that.

mdutil -E -a

That command will erase and rebuild Spotlight index on all volumes.

Since Tahoe, Spotlight has multiple modes. You might have better luck forcing it into folder & files mode. That's command-2. So command-space, spotlight UI appears, keep holding command key, press 2. There's also 1 for applications only, 3 for "actions" and 4 for clipboard history.

Thank you so much! I rebuilt the index and it's much better. And good to know about command-2 option; that's helpful. Thank you again!

The annoying thing with Finder is when you're in a folder, you start to search, and then it defaults to "This Mac" and not the god damn folder you're in.

Bloody daft.

That's because you have that set in your Finder Settings.

With the Finder open, go to Settings > Advanced, and change the drop-down at the bottom to "Search the Current Folder". This is something I do on the first run of every new Mac I set up.

No, that's because it's a default value, so the complain is 100% spot on. Bad defaults should be treated as a bug.

"Search this Mac" should be confined to Spotlight OR as a fallback if the local folder doesn't return anything.

I made this change. Thank you very much!

On my incredibly midrange PC that has a midrange SSD in it, the Linux `find` and `grep` commands usually can find stuff much quicker than any 'accelerated' and 'cached' desktop search, even though the only caching they usually get is when the files are in the page cache because I have interacted with them. Even when that's not the case, it's faster AND more accurate that GNOME search or whatever search is in Windows Explorer.

Windows is the same - searching the fs is faster and more accurate than using these 'quick search' tools, which are borderline broken.

Same example: I search Spotlight for “Voice Memos,” a built-in Apple app. Nothing. Ask Siri? It’s horrible.

Search feels like it used to be much better in finding a balance between showing app vs files vs web - feels really broken somehow and I wonder if there’s any setting I can change.

By default finder search searches all files rather than the current folder. You have to go to finder preferences to change it.

I thought i was going to greener pastures when I switched from Windows to Ubuntu but Ubuntu native search is pretty bad too.

I typed "printer" so I can get to my printer settings and the first three are printer icons/emoji. I cant imagine why these would be more important

I joked about vibe coding the solution to this but I did have Claude tell me how to fix it and apparently there is a config to change search sources.

The good part is you have the source so you can just fork it, fix the code to prioritize results properly, compile and install it to fix Ubuntu, then see if you can get your patch upstreamed. /s

Just vibe code it my man! /s

Windows 10 start menu is the same way. How is it these things are so bad??

For me it's gotten way better in iOS/macOS 27. It's also way faster. They claim to have rewritten the spotlight index to handle the new Siri integration.

The new Siri UX needs improvement and to match the UX of talking to chatGPT. At least in settings have an option to keep the Siri window always on top (just have a prominent X out to go to the screen below) and always listening ready to continue your conversation like the experience is with chatGPT.

Been running the beta since June -- on the latest beta now and 8 out of ten times to continue the conversation with Siri (most notably in the car with my phone docked) I have to constantly say "Hey Siri."

One thing it's current UX has over chatGPT voice tech as it shows you the text and provides visuals while chatGPT's UI shows no text and or visuals.

I did just that. Took me half a day. I haven't used Spotlight since. I did try alternative launchers, but they are all bloated. I just need an app launcher and simple arithmetic - that's all it does.

https://github.com/askielboe/lightning-launcher

Check out TinyStart. It’s 5€, and the best 5€ I’ve spent in ages. It’s super fast, and handles basic math. Even lets you put the results on the pasteboard!

https://tinystart.app/

It works fine for me but my wife has this exact problem. It’s absolutely mystifying how something so basic could get so messed up.

Spotlight works for me across files and apps on Mac, iOS, visionOS, pretty well - it has failed occasionally but usually it's because my disk is full. I haven't really found anything better (Alfred is good but is just a wrapper around Spotlight)

This should be the top comment!!!

It is so incredibly bad that for years I have assumed it must be me or my specific laptop. And then the years go by I just accept it.

Anytime Apple is mentioned "comically bad search" should be mentioned. It is the association I have in my mind.

> Apple's search is so comically bad.

There needs to be more rage at search in Mail.app.

It’s quicker to rollback through them all than it is to use search, but when you get tens or hundreds a day it’s excruciating.

Please Apple, fix email search.

I quit Apple Mail (due to its poor handling of Gmail accounts) and started using Mimestream years ago. Truly excellent mail client. Actively and thoughtfully developed.

Paid but worth every penny.

They did fix it (macOS 27, my experience). I have like 600,000 mail messages - there was a period where Mail search was awful but these days it's fast and accurate. It really comes down to whether you need to rebuild your index.

I’ll have it not show Xcode. It’s apples main developer ide. Most of the time it works. Then it gets into some weird loop. Only shows the Xcode website. Very helpful.

I use Raycast and it’s much better than spotlight imo

Raycast2 has its own index and it's way more reliable and fast. I don't understand how Apple does not care about many of the core services of their OS. Searching in Mail is a coinflip

This is why I use Alfred instead of spotlight.

https://www.alfredapp.com/

Alfred afaik uses the spotlight index too, so if that's the problem you're out of luck.

The number one thing I want to use it for is opening folders eg Downloads. It has such a hard time ever recommending the right thing.

Ever since they re-did Spotlight I've had issues. When I type something and press Return it should activate. I shouldn't have to wait for it to populate the results and then press Return a second time. Moreover they've broken the ability for me to use Cmd to locate files quickly. I have to awkwardly Cmd-double-click the result with my cursor because trying to Cmd-Return triggers Ask Siri!

The first thing I do on any mac is replace the default search, usually with alfred.

Same. But Alfred is not immune to these frustrations.

True, but it's way better in my experience.

What makes it amazingly worse is that all of this USED to work SO much better!

Use EasyFind for no-nonsense file search: https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/freeware

Turn off all the web search and other domains that the index uses. Apple took a really brain dead decision to include web search in the results, and they are the worst. It is completely useless, and even though the recall has expanded, the precision is abysmal.

Use Raycast, and never look back

I got so annoyed at this recently I turned off spotlight entirely and replaced it with 3rd party software. I couldn’t be happier with my choice.

Check out Raycast / Alfred.

Yeah, Alfred is one of the first things I install on a new MacOS install.

Also enjoying Rectangles WM.

Alfred is wonderful for launching applications and custom actions, but it’s actually worse than Spotlight search for searching for files and folders. It finds a lot of results but inexplicably it likes to rank partial matches ahead of exact matches.

Why vibecode - obsidian

alfred and quicksilver etc. all work surprisingly well.

i still use alfred. wish it was there for ios

Cmd+space, cmd+1 to search apps only

You mean, like this?

https://imgur.com/a/pmtihO1

That's a user error, you simply had "This Mac" selected (preselected) instead of narrowing scope to be Applications.

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