The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space.
For many users, it is a strict downgrade that was forced on them against their consent.
How was it "against their consent?" The Siri AI / Apple Intelligence feature required a user to explicitly enable it. It didn't just get enabled for you.
I know this because I just explicitly enabled it, and now I have the new Spotlight search. I didn't have it before I enabled it.
Spotlight search has sucked from Day 1 of OSX. You need to use Find Any File [0] or some equivalent tool if you want to search the actual file system without being limited by Spotlight's never-properly-updated "index."
The functionality of Find Any File was built in to Mac OS 9 and earlier. It was rock-solid reliable. So of course Apple removed it and now to get reliable search you have to use a third-party tool. Or 'find' in the Terminal.
I made my own “pseudo spotlight” and mapped it to ⌘-Space specifically for this. It just goes against old fashioned locate/updatedb, but with a very quick check against /Applications first + running the search query through bc and if it’s valid syntax, showing the math result.
The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space.
For many users, it is a strict downgrade that was forced on them against their consent.
How was it "against their consent?" The Siri AI / Apple Intelligence feature required a user to explicitly enable it. It didn't just get enabled for you.
I know this because I just explicitly enabled it, and now I have the new Spotlight search. I didn't have it before I enabled it.
I never asked for it, I had to disable it
I don’t want to make my search more ambiguous. That is the opposite of what I want.
The existing search on macOS was almost completely useless to be fair
Spotlight search has sucked from Day 1 of OSX. You need to use Find Any File [0] or some equivalent tool if you want to search the actual file system without being limited by Spotlight's never-properly-updated "index."
The functionality of Find Any File was built in to Mac OS 9 and earlier. It was rock-solid reliable. So of course Apple removed it and now to get reliable search you have to use a third-party tool. Or 'find' in the Terminal.
[0] https://findanyfile.app/
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Just because something is convenient or necessary for you, it doesn't mean it is convenient or necessary for everyone
Can it now consistently find things in /Applications when I type the full name?
That's revolutionary.
No.
I made my own “pseudo spotlight” and mapped it to ⌘-Space specifically for this. It just goes against old fashioned locate/updatedb, but with a very quick check against /Applications first + running the search query through bc and if it’s valid syntax, showing the math result.