5 Reasons Spotlight Isn’t Good Enough (And How Fenn Fixes That)

Mar 25, 2025

Let’s face it—Spotlight is stuck in the past.

It’s 2025, and we’re still using a search tool that feels like it hasn’t evolved since the iPod days. You remember something—an image, a phrase, a moment—but when you type it into Spotlight, you’re met with silence or a wall of irrelevant files.

That’s why we built Fenn.
To give you a way to actually find what you’re looking for on your Mac—even if it’s buried inside a video, a PDF, or an image.

Let’s dig into the five biggest problems with Spotlight—and how Fenn fixes each one.

1. Spotlight Doesn’t Understand What You Mean

Let’s say you’re working on a presentation about the last Logitech hardware release and you need to drop in an image of a desktop mouse—you’re sure you saved one last week.

So you open Spotlight and type:
👉 desktop mouse

Result?
A bunch of random files with “mouse” in the filename. Maybe some PDFs. Maybe nothing useful. Definitely not the image you were thinking of.

Now try that same search in Fenn.
You type desktop mouse—and Fenn instantly returns the exact photo you saved.

Even if the image was named something like IMG_0492.jpg, and had no tags or metadata.

Why?
Because Fenn actually understands what’s in the image. It sees the mouse on the desk. It knows what a desktop setup looks like.

So whether you saved it from the web, took a screenshot, or snapped it with your phone—Fenn finds it.

No guessing filenames. No digging through folders.
Just type what you’re looking for—and it shows up.

Want a full breakdown of how Spotlight’s keyword matching falls short? Check out our Ultimate Spotlight Guide.

2. Spotlight Can’t See Inside Multimedia Files

Let’s say you’re looking for a specific photo you saved weeks ago.
You remember it was a picture of a cat—someone had edited it with text that said “Miss Blythe”

So you open Spotlight, type in Miss Blythe…
Nothing.
Spotlight has no idea what’s inside your images—especially if the words aren’t in the filename or metadata.

But with Fenn?
You type Miss Blythe, hit Enter—

👉 Fenn instantly finds the cat photo, because it scanned the image and read the embedded text using OCR.

Fenn doesn’t just search filenames. It looks inside your media—photos, screenshots, scans, you name it.

So even if “Miss Blythe” was just a caption written in Comic Sans on a cat meme, Fenn sees it.

Curious how Fenn learned to see like this?
👉 Read The Vision Behind Fenn for how we built visual + semantic search from the ground up.

3. Spotlight Breaks After Updates

The latest Sequoia update (macOS 15.1) has been a disaster for Spotlight.
If you’ve noticed apps missing from results, files disappearing, or indexing randomly resetting—you’re not alone.

Reddit is full of complaints like:

“I reindexed Spotlight twice and it still doesn’t show my apps!”
“Search breaks every time my Mac sleeps.”

We covered this in detail in Why Spotlight Is Failing on macOS Sequoia—along with temporary fixes that don’t stick.

Fenn?
Rock-solid.
It runs locally, uses its own robust indexing engine, and doesn’t get tripped up after a reboot or OS update.

4. Spotlight Has No Search Intensity Control

This is a big one. Spotlight offers one flat, one-size-fits-none search.
No nuance. No tuning.

Fenn gives you three levels of search intensity, so you can choose how deep you want to go:

🔍 Low — blazing fast, perfect for everyday use
🎯 Mid — filters out false negatives and gives you more precision
🧠 High — our “needle in a haystack” mode. For when you know it’s there and need Fenn to look everywhere.

Need to track down that one quote in a 3-hour Zoom recording?
High intensity has your back.

Want quick results from a recent document?
Low mode gets you there in milliseconds.

It’s a flexible system designed for real-world search needs—not a rigid, black-box search bar.

5. Spotlight’s UX Is Stuck in 2015

Spotlight’s user experience hasn’t changed in years.

No history.
No persistent window.
No way to see your recent queries or pick up where you left off.

Fenn, on the other hand, gives you:

A persistent search window
Search history you can revisit
Context-aware sorting

It’s search that feels modern—designed for the way we actually use our Macs in 2025.

And bonus: Fenn, you can even search starting from an image.
Just drag and drop any photo—Fenn will instantly scan your local files to find:

Matching frames inside videos
Visually similar images
Related content based on objects, colors, or even text in the image

Whether it’s a screenshot, a meme, or a still from a video—Fenn understands what it sees, and finds anything like it across your system.

This goes beyond filenames or tags—it’s true visual search, right on your Mac.

The Bottom Line: Spotlight Isn’t Built for the Way You Work

Spotlight was fine when all we needed to do was launch Safari or find a .txt file.

But in today’s world—video calls, 10,000+ files, screenshots galore, dense docs, and visual assets—it just doesn’t hold up.

Fenn is built for now.

Built for Apple Silicon
Built for privacy (100% local)
Built to understand context
Built to see inside your content

Want to see what smarter search feels like?
👉 Try Fenn now and never lose a file again.

Next time you're stuck thinking, “I know I saw that somewhere…”
Fenn will help you find it—in seconds.

You might also like:

‹ Why Privacy Matters in File Search on Mac

The Vision Behind Fenn: Rethinking File Search on macOS ›