Spotlight on your Mac

Spotlight is an easy way to find anything on your iMac, such as documents, contacts, calendar events, and email messages. Spotlight Suggestions offer info from Wikipedia articles, web search results, news, sports, weather, stocks, movies, and other sources.

Search for anything. Click at the top right of the screen, then start typing. On the 24-inch iMac, you can also press the Spotlight key on your keyboard.

Tip: Type Command–Space bar to show or hide the Spotlight search field.

The Spotlight window showing search results on the left.

Convert currencies and measurements. Enter a currency—like $, €, or ¥—and an amount, then press Return to get a list of converted values. Or specify a unit of measure for measurement conversions.

A screenshot showing dollars converted to pesos, with a top hit showing the conversion and several other selectable results.

Open an app. Enter the app name in Spotlight, then press Return.

Turn off Spotlight Suggestions. If you want Spotlight to search only for items on your iMac, open System Preferences, click Spotlight, then click to deselect Siri Suggestions. You can also make other changes to the list of categories Spotlight searches.

Learn more. See Search with Spotlight on Mac in the macOS User Guide.

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iMac Essentials

Spotlight on your Mac