Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Google did something recently that I didn’t see coming from a mile away. While Google does make a few desktop apps (I swear it should be making many more), like Drive for syncing your folders, I never, in my wildest dreams, thought it would bring Search to Windows as a native app. But it did — and how.
The new Google Search app experiment on Windows looks like a one-stop solution for anyone more invested in Google’s ecosystem than Microsoft’s Copilot efforts. And seeing it in action as a Mac user, I don’t want to admit it, but I’m a bit jealous. Sure, Apple has Spotlight, but it’s still light on AI and lacks the best of what Google Search offers — the features I actually use every single day.
If Gemini came to macOS, would you ditch Spotlight? 18 votes Absolutely 56 % Maybe, depends on the integration quality 22 % Nah, I'm loyal to Spotlight 6 % I don't use either much 17 %
What is Spotlight on Mac
Apple
If you don’t know what Spotlight is or don’t fully grasp its scope, here’s a quick crash course.
When I first switched from Windows, the most delightfully surprising thing I discovered on Mac was Spotlight. It’s just a Cmd + Space away, letting you search for practically anything — use the built-in dictionary, do some quick math without opening a browser, launch apps, or dig up files without diving through endless layers of folders and subfolders.
Coming from Windows (which had nothing of this sort back then but does now), I was blown away by the sheer convenience. What amazed me even more was that people were using third-party apps like Alfred to push those capabilities further, adding features like text expansion, clipboard history, and more, while I was still happily playing around with Spotlight’s “basics.”
With the recent macOS Tahoe update, Apple has made Alfred somewhat redundant thanks to additions like clipboard history and the ability to run Shortcuts right from Spotlight (and honestly, Shortcuts alone deserves a separate story).
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