Shine a light on search results with Spotlight

Quickly find vital info on the internet, as well as documents on your Mac

A Spotlight categories

Search results in Spotlight are a mix of content from the internet, and whatever the search engine finds on your Mac’s internal drive, external storage, and iCloud Drive. If you don’t find certain categories useful, you can disable them in the Spotlight pane within System Preferences.

B News sources

It’s not going to replace a newspaper, but Spotlight now includes a news section for articles related to your search term. You get a synopsis of each article, and a link to the full version online. It works pretty well for getting the latest on sports teams.

C Location maps

You can, of course, use Maps (or visit Google Maps in Safari) to find out where a place is. But type a location into Spotlight and it’ll bring up a small map that gives you a basic overview of that location, which includes photos and further information.

D Siri Knowledge

Under the rather vague heading of Siri Knowledge, you’ll find what amounts to an expanded flash card about a given subject or term. Imagery, info, and statistics are mostly pulled from Wikipedia, but you also sometimes get links to other sites and the odd map – and it may dig up something surprisingly useful. If you want to learn more about the subject matter, click on the “See more” option to open the complete article in your browser.