Macos Spotlight Does Not Find An App

Search and Spotlight

Quick access to content is key to an efficient workflow, and there are several ways you can make it easy for people to locate your app's content.

Spotlight

Spotlight is a powerful search technology that makes it easy to locate files and content across the system. Using Spotlight, people can search for things using meaningful attributes like the intended audience for a document or the orientation of an image.

Apr 02, 2019 Spotlight is an old, refined feature and if it breaks there’s likely a specific reason behind it. The feature isn’t going to break at random like Windows search does on Windows 10. If Spotlight search does keep breaking and you need to reindex files every single time to. Feb 20, 2019 However, Spotlight is not a perfect feature and sometimes you may experience problems. For instance, you may see the image stuck in the Lock screen for. Find the library of Babylon dictionaries here. We can confirm that a commonly-used tool for this process, DictUnifier, does not function in modern versions of macOS. A third-party program, Dictionaries.io, can add many multilingual spellchecking dictionaries to Dictionary.app. It is paid software, but if you’re frequently working with. Find “SystemUIServer” (you can use the search box) Double click; And click Quit; Do not worry, macOS will restart the process again, automatically within seconds. Check to see if Spotlight is working now. If you are not happy about the Spotlight search results, go to Apple menu System Preferences, click Spotlight, then click the Search.

Make your app’s content searchable. You can share content with Spotlight by making it indexable and specifying descriptive attributes—known as metadata. Spotlight extracts, stores, and organizes this information to allow for fast, comprehensive searches. For developer guidance, see Core Spotlight.

Today, we'll cover some new APIs, Core Spotlight on macOS, Drag-and-Drop, Quick Look previews, and then we'll give an update on ranking before finishing with a review of indexing and search. So, let's jump right into macOS. Core Spotlight on macOS is the exact. Spotlight does not find the Mac app when I search. Spotlight is an Apple technology, part of macOS, and we don't have any control over its indexing. This happens to me from time to time but it seems to resolve itself. You may be able to rebuild the index, but I can really only point you in the direction of Apple's documentation on this. Aug 08, 2019 Teaching Spotlight. Spotlight does not include or exclude apps in Top List based on your app usage. Instead, it looks at which apps you consistently open from its results. To that end, you need to open Spotlight, search for an app, and open the one you want to use from its search results.

Define metadata for your custom file types. Supply a Spotlight Importer plug-in that describes the types of metadata your file format contains. For developer guidance, see Spotlight Importer Programming Guide.

Use Spotlight to offer advanced file-search capabilities within the context of your app. For example, you might include a button that instantly initiates a Spotlight search based on the user’s selection. You might then display a custom window that presents the search results or a filtered subset of them.

Use the standard Open and Save dialogs. When opening or saving a document, people often need to locate a file or folder in an atypical location. The standard dialogs include a built-in search field that can be used to search and filter the entire system. For related guidance, see File Handling.

Implement a Quick Look generator if your app produces custom file types. A Quick Look generator enables other apps, including Spotlight, to show previews of your documents. These previews can be tremendously helpful when trying to locate a specific document. See Quick Look.

Consider using Spotlight behind the scenes. For example, an app could let people choose a broad file category like images to sync with a remote server, and then use Spotlight to find those files.

In-App Content Search

While Spotlight is tuned to locate files quickly, it’s not intended for performing extensive content searching within an app. An app that stores data in database records, for example, shouldn’t base its database search on Spotlight because the data aren’t stored in separate files.

Use system APIs to enable fine-grained textual searching. The system-provided APIs support phrase-based searching, prefix/suffix/substring searching, Boolean searching, summarization, relevance ranking, and more. For developer guidance, see Search Kit.

Let people save searches whenever possible. Users appreciate being able to perform specific searches again, especially if they spent time defining (and refining) useful criteria.

Find Windows

Macos Spotlight Does Not Find An Apps

A Find window is a nonmodal dialog used to search for content within a document. A Find window lets people specify search criteria, including an item to search for and options for narrowing the scope of the search. Options when performing a text-based search, for example, might include whole-word and case-matching searches. The Find window is typically displayed by choosing a Find menu item in the Edit menu (or pressing its equivalent keyboard shortcut). See Edit Menu.

If your app is document-based, consider implementing a Find window. Most document-based apps include Find windows, and users are accustomed to looking for and using them.

Offer find and replace functionality. While searching is great for locating content, it’s not ideal when a user has to manually change each found result. If a search feature is accompanied by a replace feature, the user can automatically change all found results in a single step.

Consider letting people perform multi-document find operations. In an app that lets people edit multiple documents at once, the ability to perform a global search—and replace too, if applicable—across all open documents can be a valuable time-saving feature.

Content Filtering

Macos Spotlight Does Not Find An App Download

Document searching is important, but not all apps are document-based. For example, some apps present content-rich views—like a presentation in Keynote—that can be overwhelming when they're extensive. Users may appreciate the ability to filter these types of views to quickly find specific items.

Use a search field and scope bar to enable content filtering in a view. A search field lets people initiate text-based searches in a large collection of values and a scope bar helps them refine or filter results. For guidance, see Search Fields, Scope Bars, and Scope Buttons.

You started searching for an app on Spotlight. As usual, you typed in the first few letters, expecting Spotlight to bring up the app in its suggestions. But … nothing shows up. Ouch!

If this happens, then the Spotlight app is broken on your iPhone or iPad, and you actually need to enter the entire name of an app for it to come up in the search suggestion. But, in some instances, even that doesn’t work. It’s infuriating, but let’s take a look as to why this happens in the first place.

On iOS 11, Spotlight sports the ability to scan within apps. It’s actually a useful feature that suggests additional related details like matching emails, documents, maps, etc. However, this added functionality tends to glitch out the apps themselves from appearing within the suggestions.

That's not all. If you upgraded to iOS 11 from an older version of iOS, there’s also a chance for contacts to not show up in Spotlight suggestions as well. This happens due to an issue with search indexing.

So, let’s see what you can do to put your apps and contacts back in the spotlight.

Also Read:Review: The Best and Worst of iOS 11

Fix: Spotlight Search Not Finding Apps

Note: The following fix requires iOS 11.2 or later. On the Settings screen, tap General, and then tap Software Update to check for available updates.

The additional functionality of the Spotlight search on iOS 11 is a prime reason for apps to not show up properly in the suggestions. Usually, turning this feature off should fix the issue.

But, this also disables the various app-related suggestions that you received earlier. If you don’t want that to happen, you may have to resort to resetting the settings of your iPhone or iPad. Scroll down below to learn how to do that.

Step 1: Go to the Settings screen and tap Siri and Search. You should now see a list of all the apps installed on your iPhone or iPad.

Step 2: Tap on an app, and switch Search and Siri Suggestions off. Once you do that, you should see another option labeled Show App pop up underneath. Make sure that it’s switched on.

Repeat the process for each and every app that you want to show up within Spotlight. Unfortunately, there’s no way to perform this action for all the apps at once. So, it may take quite a while.

Important: Do not turn Search and Siri Suggestions off for the Contacts app since that disables suggested contacts within Spotlight. This shouldn’t be a problem as you only need individual contacts within the app to show up, and not the app itself.

Now, start typing in the first few words of an app in Spotlight and things should function normally, albeit without the additional suggestions.

Fix: Spotlight Search Not Finding Contacts

A corrupt Contacts search index may prevent your contacts from showing up in Spotlight suggestions. To fix this, you need to back up, delete and re-sync the contacts on your iPhone or iPad.

However, the iOS Contacts app doesn’t make bulk deletions of contacts possible. Unless you want to spend ages trying to manually delete dozens of contacts, let's use a free app called Groups to do that instead.

Be warned, however. Groups could be the most aesthetically unpleasant app that you may have come across as of yet but it gets the job done fast.

Note: For additional safety, you may want to use an app such as My Contacts Backup to make a backup of your contacts.

How to Back Up Contacts

Let’s begin by backing up your Contacts to iCloud.

Step 1: Head over to the Settings screen, tap Contacts and then tap Default Account.

Step 2: Ensure that your default account is set to iCloud. Otherwise, your contacts won't sync properly to iCloud.

Step 3: Now, head over to Settings, tap your name and then tap iCloud.

Step 4: Make sure that the switch next to Contacts is turned on. Now, tap iCloud Backup.

Step 5: Tap Back Up Now to create a fresh backup of your device to iCloud. Doing this ensures that your contacts are backed up properly. The whole process may take about 2-5 minutes.

Step 6: Once the backup process finishes, go back and switch off Contacts syncing.

Step 7: When prompted, tap Keep on iPad.

How to Delete Contacts

Macos Spotlight Does Not Find An App Free

Now, let's use the Groups app to instantly delete the contacts of your iPhone or iPad.

Step 1: Launch Groups, and tap Select All.

Step 2: Tap Choose Action.

Step 3: On the pop-up menu, select Delete Contacts.

Step 4: Tap Remove From My iPhone! to delete your contacts.

How to Re-sync Contacts

Macos Spotlight Does Not Find An App Store

Step 1: Now, turn Contacts syncing on via the Settings screen.

Step 2: When prompted, tap Merge.

Your contacts in iCloud should now sync with the Contacts app. Hopefully, that should re-index the contacts within Spotlight and pave the way for suggested contacts to work as usual.

Common Fix: Reset iOS 11 Settings

If disabling Siri and Search Suggestions or re-syncing the contacts didn’t work to fix the Spotlight issue, you should reset the settings of your device.

Don't worry! Your data is safe. However, you may have to manually re-configure any settings within iOS 11 that was modified during normal usage.

Note: While a settings reset has no impact on data, it's always a good idea to back up your device just in case something goes wrong. On the Settings screen, tap your name, tap iCloud, tap iCloud Backup, and then tap Back Up Now to initiate a backup.

Step 1: To reset your device, head over to the General tab on the Settings screen and tap Reset.

Step 2: Tap Reset All Settings.

Step 3: When prompted, enter your passcode to proceed.

Step 4: Tap Reset to confirm.

After the reset, both your apps and contacts should work normally within the Spotlight searches. However, keep this fix as a last resort since it's not fun having to work with an iPad or iPhone on default settings.

Also Read:How to Fix iOS 11 Screen Recording Audio Not Working Problem

You Should Be Good Now

Hopefully, you should now have fixed your buggy Spotlight searches and apps and contacts are now showing up properly.

While these fixes are a major headache to go through, getting your Spotlight searches back on track saves a ton of time, which is otherwise spent on manually scanning for apps and contacts.

Apple should really get their act together and provide a permanent solution to this issue. The more people complain, the sooner they'll fix this, so make sure to let Apple know.

So, how did it go? Know of any other fixes? Drop in a comment below and let us know.

The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#contacts #iOS 11

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