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In an article on MacWorld from 2015, I saw the following image about changing the order in which items appear in Spotlight:

Spotlight system preferences

When I saw this, I wanted to change the order items appear on my Mac. 80% of my Spotlight use consists of looking up a definition in a dictionary. Currently I almost always have to scroll down to view the definition result, so I would like the dictionary to always show as the first category.

But on my Mac (macOS Catalina 10.15.6), the Spotlight window looks like this (it is Dutch) and I can't find anything about changing the order.

Spotlight on my Mac

Is there any other way to change the order of my Spotlight items? I currently still use Catalina, but perhaps on Big Sur? And does anyone know if this can be changed on iOS too?

Many thanks in advance!

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  • It certainly can\t be done on Mojave; looks like your image. Does the article you mention [but provide no link for] specify it's new to Big Sur?
    – Tetsujin
    Oct 10, 2020 at 12:14
  • Hi @Tetsujin thanks for responding. I added a link to the article in the question. My Mac has one of the latest versions of Catalina, 10.15.6.
    – ralphjsmit
    Oct 10, 2020 at 12:16
  • Hmmm.. Article from 2015, which was Yosemite. I checked Macs here with Mojave, High Sierra & El Capitan - it doesn't appear on any of them.
    – Tetsujin
    Oct 10, 2020 at 14:35
  • Well, that's weird... Thanks for checking that!
    – ralphjsmit
    Oct 10, 2020 at 18:04

2 Answers 2

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I found out after that Apple removed this feature from El Capitan. See this question.

After a bit of additional searching, I found that hitting Cmd+L brings you straight to the dictionary definitions. There's an other solution which means recording items in a plist file, but as I'm no fan of directly 'modifying' the OS, I decided to stick with the Cmd+L solution.

Thanks to Tetsujin for checking this on multiple older Macs!

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  • +1 Nice find! :)
    – Tetsujin
    Oct 10, 2020 at 18:12
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    Yeah, thanks to you checking all those versions! That brought me to the conclusion that Apple had removed it. Have a nice weekend ;-)!
    – ralphjsmit
    Oct 10, 2020 at 18:16
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    The Cmd+L trick sadly doesn't work anymore on Big Sur (reference). Nov 17, 2020 at 23:52
  • Hi @goldfrapp04 yeah I also noticed it after updating to Big Sur. Tbh, I hate it.. And you also have to hit enter to show it! I now disabled every category except Apps, Definition and Calculator. Unfortunately it still shows a Safari search as the top item, so it's not so much of a use either..
    – ralphjsmit
    Nov 18, 2020 at 8:42
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    Thank you @seh, very attentive of you! In the article it was pointed out that you could use Cmd + Up/Down to go to the next section, I didn't know that, very handy!
    – ralphjsmit
    Dec 17, 2020 at 11:04
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Yeah as others have said, it has been taken away. Classic Apple being we know better :(

I sometimes use spotlight for dictionary too and usually the dictionary results are buried down below. One little trick I find useful is doing cmd + down arrow key to skip categories and go down faster.

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  • Thanks that's very helpful, didn't know! Aug 2, 2021 at 18:43

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