Note: This blog post strays away from our usual focus on tips & tricks. It does not provide a solution or workaround for Mail searches on macOS Catalina. It rather discusses technical background and ethical considerations.
Spotlight vs. Core Spotlight
Recent versions of macOS use two indexing technologies to power local searches in the Spotlight window: Spotlight and Core Spotlight.
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Recent Posts. Exposure notification – how does COVID contact tracing work? Spotlight search Looking through third-party apps; Blackout Tuesday – Apple Music shutdown to support black artists Spotlight search Looking through third-party apps. Spotlight stealthily runs in the system background and waits for regular users to enter a search query into the browser. Once a query is detected, Spotlight causes a chain of redirects. This app uses the Amazon AWS service to redirect users to searchbaron.com, which, in turn, redirects them to bing.com. These redirects may seem harmless, since.
Spotlight was introduced with OS X 10.4 Tiger. It indexes user files. Whenever a file is modified, the Spotlight engine calls upon the appropriate importer plug-in to read metadata and text content from the file. That data is then indexed for searching.
The fact that Spotlight works only with files can be a problem for some applications. For “shoebox” applications, it is often more natural to store data items in a single file or database rather than use one file per data item. Such data items cannot be indexed by Spotlight. Thus such applications either have to change their data storage to fit Spotlight’s requirements or resort to tricks to get their data into Spotlight.
Core Spotlight is a more recent addition. Core Spotlight does not watch for data or files to appear. Instead, applications actively submit data to Core Spotlight for indexing. This reversal of roles allows Core Spotlight to index any kind of data.
Migration to Core Spotlight
In recent years, Apple has migrated a few system applications to use monolithic storage rather than individual files. A few years back, Safari history items and Apple Notes were saved as individual files. We were sad to see this information moved to databases. With that, a file search tool can at best find the file that holds all notes. This is of much less interest than the individual notes.
Such items still appear in the Spotlight window by way of Core Spotlight.
Some third-party applications have also found it easier to add support for Core Spotlight than to adapt their data structures to work with Spotlight.
HoudahSpot and Tembo
Up until recently, Core Spotlight was of no interest to HoudahSpot and Tembo. Core Spotlight is typically used to index items not available as individual files. HoudahSpot and Tembo, however, are designed as file search and organization tools. These applications expect to work with files that have a name and a path, can be tagged, can be copied, etc.
The other reason HoudahSpot and Tembo have not added support for Core Spotlight, is that Apple has yet to provide public API to allow third-party applications to search Core Spotlight. The documented API allows only for searching data owned by the application that does the searching.
This became a problem with the release of macOS 10.15 Catalina. Even though the Apple Mail application still stores mail messages as individual files, it has moved indexing from Spotlight to Core Spotlight. This puts searching for Apple Mail messages off-limits to third-party applications, scripts, and automation tools.
Far-Reaching Consequences
The removal of Mail messages from the Spotlight index does not only affect file search tools.
Spotlight was the de-facto API for accessing Mail messages. It gave access to messages, their subject, sender and recipient names, as well as a wealth of other well-documented metadata. Spotlight also provided notifications when new mail was downloaded.
This allowed applications and scripts to work with mail without duplicating the effort of connecting to mail servers. Automation tools could set up actions to run upon receiving email messages. E.g. a mail to self to “turn on screen sharing”.
Apple has removed this public API without prior notice of deprecation and without providing a replacement.
Privacy
The decision not to allow third-party applications access to Mail searches steps out of line with Apple’s current efforts on privacy. On macOS, Apple likes to put the user in the driver’s seat. At every turn, the system asks the user whether to allow or deny access to potentially sensitive data.
macOS Mojave and Catalina have an option to allow applications to access application data like Mail, Messages, etc. The user can thus decide to trust an application with access to his/her Mail messages. Yet Apple all but overrides the user’s choice by still not allowing that application access to the search index for Mail messages.
This may appear to be a cautious approach that favors security and privacy over application interoperability and productivity. In truth, the new situation is likely to undo privacy benefits provided by the “Full Disk Access” protection introduced with macOS Mojave.
Power users and third-party applications are likely to create their own search indexes. These additional copies of the private data contained in mail messages will not benefit from SIP / “Full Disk Access” protection.
Implementation Details
It appears that from a technical point of view, Spotlight and Core Spotlight are not all that different. Both share a common index file format. Spotlight typically stores its index at the root of the drive. The Core Spotlight index is found in the user home folder.
Further digging left the impression that Spotlight and Core Spotlight also share the same search API. The very same API that HoudahSpot uses to work with Spotlight seems to be capable of bringing in search results from Core Spotlight. It appears it does so when used by Apple’s Spotlight window application. Yet it refuses to do so when called from a third-party application.
The Apple Spotlight application has two Apple private codesigning entitlements: com.apple.private.corespotlight.internal and com.apple.private.corespotlight.search.internal. It seems reasonable to assume that these entitlements trigger the change in behavior of the Spotlight search API. With these entitlements present, the default Spotlight application gets access to search results that are withheld from third-party applications.
One has to applaud the fact that the existing API did not simply start bringing in Core Spotlight results when that new technology was introduced. An application that expects search results to contain only files would have been caught off guard had the API thrown in data items from shoebox databases.
Unfortunately, Apple chose not to provide an option for third-party applications to opt into Core Spotlight search results. This puts more and more user data (Apple Notes, Safari bookmarks, third-party “shoebox” data, etc.) off-limits to search and automation tools.
Further Considerations
What is frustrating about the Catalina Mail situation is that there is no obvious reason for neither the switch to Core Spotlight nor for not allowing third-party applications to search for Mail messages. Even after the switch to Core Spotlight, Apple could have allowed Spotlight API to include Mail messages in search results.
There however is a much bigger problem. Since there is no way for third-party applications to search Core Spotlight, no third-party can offer a full-featured alternative to the Spotlight window. Apple has purposely limited API access so that no third-party can build upon the existing search indexes to provide better tools.
With all its flaws and limitations, the Spotlight window is made to be the only user interface that can dig up both files and data stashed in shoebox applications. Power users who need to work with more files that the anemic Spotlight can handle are forced to juggle Spotlight, Finder, and third-party tools to get a complete picture of their data.
For example, when one tries to find all interactions with one a particular client, it would be most useful to find project files, invoices, mail messages, calendar entries, notes, etc. in one place. This used to be the case. As more and more data moves to shoeboxes and indexing shifts to Core Spotlight, one has to check many in places to again piece together a complete picture. The Spotlight window shows only the top few matches. Finder and HoudahSpot provide the remaining files. The Spotlight window also finds a few notes and Mail messages. Yet one has to visit each application separately to get a full set of search results.
Automation and application integration – formerly a hallmark of the Mac – are pushed out the door as more and more user data is hidden away in iOS-style data silos. It is time for a change of course that once again favors productivity.
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The solution is obvious: Apple needs to again allow third-party applications full access to the search engines it builds into macOS. This includes both Spotlight and Core Spotlight.
We encourage readers to submit feedback to Apple.
macOS is designed to be easy to navigate for the average computer user, but finding some tools and features can be arduous, especially if you are going through System Preferences. Luckily, the Mac has a Menu bar (the small strip at the top of your screen) which has some very useful shortcuts to the most important features.
What's on the Menu bar?
The best way to make the most out of the Menu bar on the Mac is to get to know what's on it.
Apple menu - This is where you find important system tools and features, like information about your Mac, System Preferences, access to the App Store (and whether there are updates for apps), recently opened items, a shortcut to putting your Mac to sleep, restarting your Mac, shutting down your Mac, and logging out of your account.
App menu - Just past the Apple menu icon is the currently-selected app menu. When an app is open and in use, you'll see such categories as File, Edit, View, Window, Help, and more. Each app has a different menu layout.
System status menu - The System status menu includes third-party widgets that you can download from the Mac App Store, the volume controls, Wi-Fi status, AirPlay, the battery (on laptops), and the date and time.
Spotlight - Spotlight is the Mac's system-wide and online search tool. You can type anything into the Spotlight search and you will almost definitely find what you are looking for.
Siri - With Siri on the Mac, you can use the personal digital assistant to look up information, add events to the calendar, set reminders, and a whole lot more.
Notification Center - You can set widgets in Notification Center to provide quick access to things that matter the most to you, like the weather, your daily schedule, iTunes control, and special content from some third-party apps.
How to remove widgets from the Menu bar on the Mac
Over time, the Menu bar can start to get cluttered, especially when you add third party widgets. You can remove macOS status widgets if you don't use them. Free download cheque printing software for mac free.
Right-click or control-click on a widget in the Menu bar.
Select Open Preferences.
Untick the box for Show in Menu bar.
In third-party apps (like Fantastical 2, when you click on the widget, there is usually a settings icon (it looks like a gear), which you can click on to quit or disable Menu bar access.
How to change the date and time in the Menu bar on the Mac
You can change the date, time, time zone, and look of the Date & Time of your Mac.
Note: If you manually change the date and time on your Mac, you could negatively impact programs running on your computer, and possibly get banned from certain games that consider time alterations a method of cheating at a game, so tread lightly.
How to manually change the date and time
Click on the date and time in the Menu bar in the upper right corner of your screen.
Click on Open Date & Time Preferences.
Click the Date & Time tab.
Click the lock to make changes.
Enter your administrator password and click Unlock.
Untick the box for Set date and time automatically.
Select a new date.
Select a new time.
You can also set the date and time automatically for a different country. You can set it for the U.S., Asia, or Europe.
How to manually change the time zone
Click on the date and time in the Menu bar in the upper right corner of your screen.
Click on Open Date & Time Preferences.
Click the Time Zone tab.
Click the lock to make changes.
Enter your administrator password and click Unlock.
Untick the box for Set time zone automatically using current location.
Click on a new region.
How to change the look of the date and time Menu bar widget
Click on the date and time in the Menu bar in the upper right corner of your screen.
Click on Open Date & Time Preferences.
Click the Clock tab.
Click the lock to make changes.
Enter your administrator password and click Unlock.
Click Digital or Analog to change what the clock looks like.
Tick the box for Show the day of the week to show the day of the week.
Tick the box for Show date to show the date.
How to use the battery widget in the Menu bar on Mac
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The battery widget in the Menu bar, which will only appear on Apple laptops, shows you how much juice you have left before you'll need to charge up again. It also shows a few interesting facts about your usage.
Click on the battery widget.
The first status shows approximately how much time left you have before your battery runs out. It also shows whether your laptop is running on battery power or if it is plugged into an outlet.
The second status shows which program is being a battery hog. This is helpful if you notice that your battery is draining much faster than normal. It could be a buggy app.
Click on Show Percentage to show, in numbers, how much battery power is remaining.
Click on Open Energy Saver Preferences to adjust how long your screen and hard drive stay awake when not in use.
How to use Spotlight on the Mac
Spotlight is your Mac's systemwide search. When you type in a term, it will search for apps, documents, files, emails, and more. It will also search the internet, your contacts, directions in Maps, currency conversions, calculations, and a whole lot more. It's your one-stop shop for shortcuts to everything you use on your Mac.
How to use Siri on the Mac
Just like Siri on the iPhone and iPad, Siri on the Mac can be your personal virtual assistant. It searches your Mac for files and folders, schedules calendar events, and keeps important search results in your Notification Center. Need to know something? Siri can help with that.
How to use Notification Center on the Mac
Notification Center is a side panel that you can access whenever you want to quickly see what's on deck for today, what the weather looks like for the afternoon, or your list of things to do today. With third-party Notification Center widgets, you can stylize your Today view with all of your most important productivity apps.
How to rearrange Menu bar icons
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Hold down the command key on your keyboard.
Click on the icon you would like to move. Make sure the command key is still pressed.
Drag the icon to its new location.
Let go of the mouse and command key to let the icon fall into place.
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Bonus: Pro tips for Menu bar widgets on the Mac
Pressing the option key on your keyboard while clicking on some of the built-in Menu bar widgets will call up different information.
Option + Click on Wi-Fi to call up additional information about your wireless network, such as your IP address, the router address, your security type, and more. You can also create a diagnostic report and open a wireless diagnostic.
Option + Click on Bluetooth to see additional information about your Bluetooth connection, including its version and address. You can also create a diagnostic report on your Desktop.
Option + Click on Notification Center to manually turn Do Not Disturb on or off.
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