Blog
Notes from the launcher
Product updates, deep dives into keyboard-first workflows, and the occasional rant about Spotlight. Written by the CmdSpace team.
macOS Tahoe 26 Spotlight vs CmdSpace: what the new command palette gets right and wrong
For the first time in roughly a decade, Spotlight feels like Apple actually opened it up and rewrote it. macOS Tahoe 26 ships a real command-palette UI — tabs for Apps, Files, Actions, and Clipboard reachable via Cmd+1, Cmd+2, Cmd+3, Cmd+4…
Spotlight vs Finder search on macOS: when to use which (and when neither works)
Most macOS users think of Spotlight and Finder search as the same thing wearing two different hats. They are not. They share a backend — both lean on the mds daemon and the on-disk metadata index — but the way each surfaces results is genu…
Spotlight on macOS Tahoe can't find your files? Six fixes that actually work
You type a filename you know is on disk. Spotlight returns nothing — or worse, it returns the file's parent folder but not the file itself. On macOS Tahoe 26 this has become common enough that the TidBits forum keeps a running thread about…
mdworker eating your CPU on macOS? Here's what to do in 2026
If your fans suddenly sound like a jet engine and Activity Monitor shows a process named mdworkershared or mdsstores near the top, you have already met Spotlight's indexer. On a healthy machine the indexer should be invisible — it runs in…
Why Spotlight keeps reindexing after every macOS update (and how to stop it)
You install a .x.0 release on Sunday night. Monday morning your Mac is warm, the fan is on, and Activity Monitor shows mdsstores near the top of the CPU list. Tuesday it is still there. The internet says "this is normal after an update", a…
Is Spotlight wearing down your SSD? Evidence from Sequoia and Tahoe
If you owned a Mac on macOS Sequoia in 2024 and watched the "Bytes Written" line in Disk Utility climb hundreds of gigabytes a day with the lid closed, you were not imagining it. Spotlight's indexer briefly turned into one of the largest s…
Turn off Siri Suggestions on macOS: a step-by-step privacy reset
Siri Suggestions is the umbrella name for the predictions macOS surfaces in Spotlight, Safari, Mail, Messages, the Share sheet, and a handful of other places — the "you might want to text this person", "you might want to open this app", "h…
Open-source macOS launchers compared: Ueli, Kando, and the rest
"Open source macOS launcher" is a small but real category in 2026. Most of the major launchers — Raycast, Alfred, LaunchBar, CmdSpace — are closed-source. If your threat model or your principles require open-source software in your hotkey…
An offline-first macOS workflow that survives flaky Wi-Fi and AI hype
Half the apps on a modern Mac stop working when the network does. Your launcher's AI panel returns a spinner. Your notes app refuses to open the local file until it has authenticated. Your text expander syncs from a server before it lets y…
How to migrate from Spotlight to CmdSpace on macOS Tahoe
Spotlight on macOS Tahoe 26 looks better than ever. It also breaks more than ever. If you have ever watched mdworkershared pin a CPU core for an afternoon, or asked Spotlight for a file you know is on disk and gotten a blank result page, y…
macOS keyboard shortcuts: a 2026 power-user reference
Most macOS shortcut lists are written for the median user. They tell you ⌘C and ⌘V and stop just before the interesting ones begin. This is not that list. This is the 2026 reference for power users — the people who have already internalize…
macOS window management without a third-party app (and when you still need one)
For most of macOS's history, window management meant either dragging by the title bar like an animal, learning AppleScript, or installing a third-party app. Apple finally shipped real tiling in Sequoia and refined it in Tahoe. The built-in…