What Is Semantic Search? And Why Your Mac Needs It in 2025

Mar 31, 2025

Let’s start with a question:
Have you ever typed a search into Spotlight and thought, “Why is this so dumb?”

You knew what you meant.
You remembered the idea.
But all you got back was a random list of filenames that didn’t help at all.

That’s the problem with traditional search.
It doesn’t understand meaning, it just matches words. And in 2025, that’s not good enough.

This is where semantic search comes in and why your Mac needs it more than ever.

What Is Semantic Search?

Semantic search is search that understands what you mean, not just what you type.

Instead of looking for exact keywords, it looks for context, concepts, and relationships. It's closer to how we think and remember things.

So when you type:
“Dog wearing a party hat”
You’re not relying on a file name. You’re describing a moment. Semantic search picks that up—and delivers.

With Fenn, that moment actually shows up instantly. Even if the video is called clip_final_v3.mov.

That’s the difference. Traditional search parses strings.
Fenn understands meaning.

Keyword vs Semantic: Real-World Examples

Let’s walk through some comparisons between Spotlight and Fenn:

You Remember: A long PDF you read last month about resilience in startups.
You Type: resilience startup

Spotlight: Maybe shows you a folder with “startup” in the title. You click and scroll. And scroll. And scroll.

Fenn: Takes you directly to the section that talks about founder burnout, mental stamina, and resilience even if it never uses those exact words.

You Remember: A screenshot of a Wi-Fi password you got at a coffee shop.
You Type: coffee420

Spotlight: Blank screen. No match.

Fenn: Finds the screenshot, reads the text inside the image, and shows it to you in seconds.

You Remember: A client mentioned something in a Zoom call, maybe around minute 42.
You Type: pricing options

Spotlight: Can’t search audio. You’re on your own.

Fenn: Pulls up the transcript, highlights where “pricing options” was discussed, and jumps to that exact moment.

Why Spotlight Can’t Keep Up

Spotlight is built on an old model: keyword matching.
It doesn’t understand context, visuals, or audio. It can’t process what your query actually means just whether it contains matching strings.

In The Ultimate Spotlight Guide, we dig into how Spotlight works under the hood and why it struggles with real-world content like PDFs, scanned documents, or video.

Semantic search solves all of that.

How Fenn Brings Semantic Search to Your Mac (Locally)

Fenn uses lightweight, on-device AI models to extract meaning from your files—without sending a single byte to the cloud.

It processes:

Text: Inside PDFs, slides, notes, and documents
Images: Reading what’s visually present or written in screenshots
Video: Identifying frames, visual scenes, and speech
Audio: Transcribing and semantically indexing spoken content

And all of it runs locally on Apple Silicon. That’s not just fast—it’s private by design. For a deeper look at how local search protects your data, read Why Privacy Matters in File Search.

The Benefit: You Search Like a Human

Semantic search means you can stop playing guessing games with filenames or folder names. You just describe the idea—and Fenn finds it.

Whether it’s:

A visual moment in a video
A single paragraph in a 300-page report
A quote buried in an audio recording
A sketch saved as “Scan 10 (3).jpg”

You get what you're looking for quickly, privately, and contextually.

This is what we built Fenn for: to help you find what you actually meant, not just what you happened to type.

The Future Is Local, Semantic, and Smart

The truth is, semantic search is what Spotlight should have become years ago. But Apple’s not there yet. In fact, many of the most exciting “Apple Intelligence” features are still delayed and even when they arrive, they may not go as deep into your files as Fenn already does.

With Fenn, that future is here now.

No waiting. No cloud sync. No compromise.

Final Thought

You’re not just storing files on your Mac.
You’re storing memories, knowledge, work, and ideas.

And when you need to find something important, it should feel effortless, not like detective work.

Semantic search is the key.
Fenn makes it possible.

So the next time you’re stuck thinking,
“I know I saw that somewhere…”

Let Fenn find it—in seconds.

👉 Try Fenn – The Smarter, Deeper File Search Engine for macOS

You might also like:

‹ Visual Search on Mac: How Fenn Lets You Find Images by Content, Not Filenames

Apple Intelligence Delayed? Fenn Brings Smarter File Search to Your Mac—Right Now ›