Indices of filesystem
metadata are maintained by the Metadata Server (which appears in the system as the
mds daemon, or
mdworker). The Metadata Server is started by
launchd when macOS (formerly Mac OS X, then OS X) boots and is activated by client requests or changes to the filesystems that it monitors. It is fed information about the files on a computer's
hard disks by the
mdimport daemon; it does not index removable read-only media such as
CDs or
DVDs, but it will index removable, writable external media connected via USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt, and Secure Digital cards. Aside from basic information about each file like its name, size and timestamps, the mdimport daemon can also index the content of some files, when it has an Importer plug-in that tells it how the file content is formatted. Spotlight comes with importers for certain types of files, such as
Microsoft Word,
MP3, and
PDF documents. Apple publishes
APIs that allow developers to write Spotlight Importer plug-ins for their own file formats. These utilities are also available on
Darwin. Although not widely advertised,
Boolean expressions can be used in Spotlight searches. By default if one includes more than one word, Spotlight performs the search as if an "AND" was included in between words. If one places a '|' between words, Spotlight performs an OR query. Placing a '-' before a word tells Spotlight to search for results that do not include that word (a NOT query). Currently Spotlight is unable to index and search
NTFS volumes shared via
SMB.
Leopard " in
Mac OS X Leopard With
Mac OS X Leopard, Apple introduced some additional features. With Spotlight in Tiger, users can only search devices that are attached to their computers. With Leopard, Spotlight is able to search networked Macs running Leopard (both client and server versions) that have file sharing enabled. A feature called
Quick Look has been added to the
GUI that will display live previews of files within the search results, so applications do not have to be opened just to confirm that the user has found the right file. The syntax has also been extended to include support for worded Boolean operators ("AND", "OR" and "NOT"). These variants of the operators are localized; while users that have their System language set to English may use an "AND", German users, for example, would have to use "UND". The character variants work with any system language. Also while Spotlight is not enabled on the server version of Tiger, it is on the server release of Leopard. In addition, where Spotlight in Tiger had a unique and separate window design, Spotlight in Leopard now shares windows with the Finder, allowing for a more unified GUI. The unique Spotlight window in Tiger allowed sorting and viewing of search results by any metadata handled by the Finder; whereas Spotlight Finder windows in Leopard are fixed to view and sort items by last opened date, filename and kind only. Under Leopard there is currently no way to save window preferences for the Finder window that is opened via Spotlight. Since Leopard the Spotlight menu has doubled as a
calculator, with functionality very similar to the
Google search feature (but without the need to be online), as well as a dictionary that allows one to look up the definition of an English word using the
Oxford Dictionary included in macOS.
Yosemite In
OS X Yosemite, the Spotlight search UI was completely redesigned. Instead of it acting as a drop-down menu, it is now located in the center of the screen by default, though the search bar (and/or the window itself) can be dragged to wherever the user prefers it to pop up. In addition to doing everything that the previous versions of Spotlight could do, the Yosemite revamp of Spotlight adds a preview or info pane on the right side (with results on the left side), and also adds support for searching through Wikipedia, Maps, and other sources.
Tahoe Following the
Liquid Glass design language, Spotlight has been redesigned in
macOS Tahoe. The
Launchpad functionality has been merged with Spotlight, and can be used to search for apps and display a categorized app grid. Spotlight has also gained the ability to take system actions, run
Shortcuts, and view clipboard history. ==iOS and iPadOS==