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0 pointscedws7mo ago0 comments

Nah I think they’re just bad at search, macOS Spotlight search has to be the most slow janky search I have ever used.

0 comments

Which I find really sad because at one point OSX had search quality that was really satisfying. That was maybe twenty years ago for me.

xp847mo ago

Yes. Spotlight search for the Application launcher use-case was close to the speed and quality of LaunchBar (which still works that way of course) when Apple first introduced the command-space shortcut, on vastly slower “oughts” computers. Today it’s much slower and less consistent.

However we know that they could easily do a simple search effectively because Apple’s Launchpad has a perfect app search built in. If you give Launchpad a global shortcut you can press <shortcut>saf<return> and be assured it will instantly open safari every time. Of course, LaunchBar (no affiliation, but I’ve been using it for 22 years) still beats that in every way.

tim3337mo ago

My favourite was back in os7. I didn't really use the file system because you just started typing the name of the file and it came up instantly. I'm not sure why companies have to break simple stuff that works well.

kergonath7mo ago

Spotlight was a revelation in Tiger. I don’t know exactly when it degraded but it’s a damn shame how annoying it’s become.

hylaride7mo ago

MacOS to me started to regress ~2012. I can’t remember what specific release it was, but one major MacOS release around then no longer remembered my MacBook’s external monitor layouts between work and home anymore and it was always “random”.

Spotlight, AirTunes/Airplay, iTunes, etc all also just slowly degraded. It’s like Steve Jobs was personally doing all QA and it just stopped when he died. I remember iTunes genius being SO GOOD that it cost me a fortune in song purchases, but now that apple just gets my monthly music payment, discovering new music is hard again.

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DrewADesign7mo ago

You haven’t used windows search recently I take it.

ffsm87mo ago

Eh, as a person then uses both occasionally... I feel like they're pretty on-par?

Is the osx search performing so much better on your end? If so, in results or speed? Because for me, both osx and windows searches leave me annoyed anytime I try to use them, it's so bad that I usually prefer to use CLI tools on both platforms ...

Or were you just saying it cuz it's funny?

prmoustache7mo ago

On the azure win11 desktop I am using professionally (only windows I use) a large fraction of the time you can't even search anything because the windows menu just freeze.

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DrewADesign7mo ago

I’m sure there’s some indexing thing I could take care of, but windows edges out spotlight for me for both ineffectiveness and slowness on every machine I use. For me, windows used to be far better than spotlight. It’s strange to me how much better the command line tools do essentially the same job, and that, anecdotally, the GUI ones seem to be getting worse?

artursapek7mo ago

They definitely are bad at search. When I type “safar” into iOS settings, it says “no results for “safar”” while it looks for the fucking built-in browser’s search page.

kstrauser7mo ago

Weird. I get lots of relevant results with Safari at the top. Which somehow makes it a little worse: I’d naively think we should get identical results.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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mathgeek7mo ago

Which I find really sad because at one point OSX had search quality that was really satisfying. That was maybe twenty years ago for me.

xp847mo ago

tim3337mo ago

kergonath7mo ago

Spotlight was a revelation in Tiger. I don’t know exactly when it degraded but it’s a damn shame how annoying it’s become.

hylaride7mo ago

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DrewADesign7mo ago

You haven’t used windows search recently I take it.

ffsm87mo ago

Eh, as a person then uses both occasionally... I feel like they're pretty on-par?

Or were you just saying it cuz it's funny?

prmoustache7mo ago

On the azure win11 desktop I am using professionally (only windows I use) a large fraction of the time you can't even search anything because the windows menu just freeze.

3 more replies

DrewADesign7mo ago

artursapek7mo ago

They definitely are bad at search. When I type “safar” into iOS settings, it says “no results for “safar”” while it looks for the fucking built-in browser’s search page.

kstrauser7mo ago

Weird. I get lots of relevant results with Safari at the top. Which somehow makes it a little worse: I’d naively think we should get identical results.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse