Opening Applications with Spotlight

In this lesson for macOS Mojave on the Mac, I look at how you can open applications using Spotlight. This is one of my favorite or most common ways I open applications. So what is Spotlight Search? Spotlight Search is how we search the Mac for documents, folders, and even applications. What’s nice about Spotlight is once you find what you are looking for you can press the Return key and whatever you have selected will open, including applications.

Bringing Up Spotlight Search
To bring up Spotlight Search, you click on the magnifying glass menu extra in the left side of the Menu Bar. When you click on this, you will get a field that overlays your window. You can also bring up Spotlight Search by using a keyboard shortcut – Command key and the space bar. This is how I bring up Spotlight Search, I hardly ever click on the menu extra.

Searching for Applications
Once you bring up Spotlight Search, all you need to do is start typing the name of the application. You will see a number of results, and in most cases, the application will be a top hit and already selected. Just hit the return key to open it. If it is not selected, you can use the arrows keys to select it, then hit the return key to open the application.

See this Lesson Action
To see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.