Howard Oakley:

Spotlight doesn’t currently appear able to search Time Machine backups reliably, at least not in Sequoia or Tahoe, although this may not be universal.

[…]

If I now step back through my backups to reach one that I know contains that file, I can restore it. But if I type anything into the search field, nothing is found. If I change the scope of the search to that backup, the window title changes but its contents remain blank, and there isn’t even a busy spinner to indicate a search is in progress.

[…]

As I can’t disable Spotlight indexing on that volume without macOS telling me that it’s required to be indexed by Spotlight, neither can I force that volume to be reindexed.

[…]

My conclusion is that using Spotlight to search Time Machine backups no longer works, and the instructions given by Apple are also broken.

That has been my experience, too. As I see it, there are four separate problems:

1. I want to be able to search all my backup snapshots, because I don’t know which one might contain the file I want to restore. Time Machine only lets you search one at a time.
2. Searching an individual snapshot doesn’t actually work.
3. Spotlight indexing is invasive, using lots of CPU time, and with spinning hard drives causes wear and tear and creates lots of noise. If search doesn’t work anyway, I’d like to turn it off, but macOS won’t let me.
4. If the problem is with the index, there’s no way to reset it without deleting your backup.

Howard Oakley:

Unfortunately, all those saved versions in the version database fall outside the scope of Spotlight indexing, and Spotlight search can’t look inside any of the old versions saved in a volume’s version database. Surprisingly, the version browser doesn’t offer any search facilities either, as that’s presumably another feature intended for a future that never came.

[…]

One way around this is to save each document version as a separate file, allow Spotlight to extract their contents and add those to its indexes for that volume, then to search those files. This is quick and simple using my free utility Versatility.

Previously:

• Golden Gate Spotlight
• Time Machine in Tahoe
• Runaway Spotlight With Pages Document on iCloud Drive
• Spotlight Indexing Running Wild
• Invasive Spotlight Indexing
• You Can’t Turn Off Spotlight on Your Time Machine Backup

Hartley Charlton:

Apple today announced that it has rebuilt the search infrastructure that powers key features like Spotlight, Photos, and Mail across all of its major next-generation software platforms.

LLM search using Core Spotlight:

Level up basic search into a retrieval-augmented system using SpotlightSearchTool and LanguageModelSession. Explore Core Spotlight integration, delegate-based hydration patterns, and how metadata quality impacts your search results. Learn how to use custom PipelineStages for tasks like sentiment analysis. Discover best practices for indexing and building flexible, context-rich search experiences in your app.

Corentin Cras-Méneur:

So from what I understand from the WWDC keynote, Spotlight is actually going to work?? When I search for simple files, it fails the VAST majority of the time!

Saagar Jha:

I feel like I am watching the Mac OS X Leopard intro again guys how did we mess up search so bad we have to present it again

Howard Oakley:

Semantic search is different, in that its matches aren’t as crisp and Boolean. Rather than working like a simple index, it’s more like a thesaurus in effect.

[…]

Rather than compiling more exhaustive sets of keywords, semantic search can broaden the scope to cope better. And because we can interact through Siri, we can fine-tune our search results by specifying the cattle should be black and white, perhaps, and combining conventional search criteria such as location.

To get this to work effectively, there are some limitations. Because semantics are so contextual and variable, this involves apps and Core Spotlight. That’s a big benefit to user privacy, as Core Spotlight’s indexes are separated by user and stored locally, although in places like ~/Library/Metadata rather than volume-based Spotlight indexes in the existing hidden .Spotlight-V100 folders. And unlike global Spotlight indexing and search, it requires apps to have code to support both tasks, as it can’t just happen by magic.

While I’m sure we’ll all be impressed with many of the results of semantic search, hits that we never expected to find, it’s going to prove harder to assess those that it misses.

Rhythmic Fistman:

Never has it been so inconvenient to find a file whose name you know exactly

Maybe rebuilding Spotlight’s infrastructure will fix this, or maybe adding the semantic stuff will make handling simple cases like this worse.

i3aychikov:

Personally, in my experience, I’ve noticed that the new Spotlight is much faster than the one in MacOS 26 Tahoe. It opens with less delay, and finds the right app or file instantly when Spotlight in Tahoe seems to have had a slight delay.

See also: TidBITS-Talk.

Previously:

• Siri AI Announced
• WWDC 2026 Keynote
• Searching for Apps With Spotlight
• Runaway Spotlight With Pages Document on iCloud Drive
• “LG” Spotlight Indexing Bug

Update (2026-07-13): Howard Oakley:

Already that has revealed the qualities of what would be offered as a Top Hit in its ranked search, with scores such as mrScore: 0.2516, mrScoreText: 0.6878, kMDItemDisplayName: 1.0000, mrScoreFreshness: 0.50000000, mrScoreResultType: 0.0700, freshnessDate: (null), pommesL1=0.0000, L2=-4999.0283 While most of those are opaque, it’s notable that ‘freshness’ is included in ranking. In contrast, searches made in the Finder’s Find window are unranked, and don’t calculate any of those scores, nor take into account freshness.

Howard Oakley:

Salient features of Spotlight’s AsYouTypeTopHit ranked search include:

• inclusion of hits across multiple search domains;
• a freshness_score as a measure of recency or topicality;
• three opaque scores of mrScore, pommesL1 and pommesL2;
• related search considering similar data sources and websites;
• identification of Top Hits.

Rodrigo Ghedin (Hacker News):

That show of respect for its customers may change with iOS/macOS 27. Reports suggest that, at least in the first beta, Apple Intelligence is mandatory[…]

[…]

“So what’s the problem?”, you might ask. Apple’s AI takes up several gigabytes of storage and leaves less headroom for RAM.

Brandon Vigliarolo:

Those are small inconveniences, however, compared to my biggest gripe with Siri AI: It’s completely ruined Spotlight.

[…]

The new Siri-first interface that presumes that if you’re searching for anything but an app or file, you must want Siri to feed you a few links of Apple Intelligence’s choosing.

Getting to a web search from a Spotlight query now requires multiple taps: Type your query, tap “Show Results” (careful: hitting enter will trigger Siri to craft a response, eliminating the possibility of seeing any actual Spotlight content), tap on “Show More” next to the list of Siri-surfaced web results, scroll down until you see Search Google (or whatever engine you have set as your default), then tap that.

Apple Intelligence used to be opt-in, but now it seems that you can’t even opt out. I had previously mentioned the removal of the switch in the context of hypocrisy, but it seems there are enough issues here for it to warrant its own post. Also, I had previously written that the switch was combined with Siri, meaning that you could turn off Apple Intelligence if you turned off Siri, too. I now doubt that’s the case.

John Gruber:

I’m thinking that asking for a switch to turn of “Apple Intelligence” systemwide is like asking for a switch to turn off Spotlight.

Indeed, we can turn off Spotlight, both the indexing (except, alas, for APFS Time Machine volumes) and the UI, and I think that’s a good thing.

Previously:

• Apple Intelligence in appleOS 27
• No Siri AI in EU
• Chrome’s Huge weights.bin File
• Forcing Copilot AI
• Spotlight Indexing Running Wild
• Invasive Spotlight Indexing
• Bug Opted Users Back In to Sharing Siri Recordings