Spotlight - How to Remove Web Search from Results

[auxbuss]

fwiw, this is the main thing keeping me from moving from Catalina. I use Spotlight hundreds of times a day, and having to carefully watch what it returns would be extremely tedious. A bit like being forced to type with a hunt-and-peck style after learning to touch-type.

The <enter> for dictionary definition is also a significant backwards step for my usage.

 

[LizKat]

fwiw, this is the main thing keeping me from moving from Catalina. I use Spotlight hundreds of times a day, and having to carefully watch what it returns would be extremely tedious. A bit like being forced to type with a hunt-and-peck style after learning to touch-type.

No kidding. I'm trying to train myself to go back to just using Finder searches, but I don't always want the same attributes and messing w/ checking off the desired "Other" settings in the Finder options slows me down... more than when I was just letting Spotlight rip and then scrolling down through the hits to the doc type of what I usually knew I was looking for.

 

[dauntingmountain]

Registered to share this because I was also flummoxed.

Run these and reboot. It didn't get rid of all web results, but stopped putting them at top priority, and got rid of totally unrelated items on App Store, etc.

defaults write com.apple.Safari UniversalSearchEnabled -bool false
defaults write com.apple.Safari SuppressSearchSuggestions -bool true

 

[ApebitMusic]

Here with same complaint. I'd like it to only show local things on my Mac so I can type and hit enter. Instead I have to arrow down a few times. 1st world problem, but annoying. I'm on 11.5.2

 

[mattieb]

After dealing with “Mail” wanting to open Gmail web one too many times, I finally just put Alfred on my Big Sur MacBook, disabled Spotlight’s shortcut key and gave it to Alfred. It’s so… predictable. And that’s good.

 

[deejang0]

Registered to share this because I was also flummoxed.

Run these and reboot. It didn't get rid of all web results, but stopped putting them at top priority, and got rid of totally unrelated items on App Store, etc.

defaults write com.apple.Safari UniversalSearchEnabled -bool false
defaults write com.apple.Safari SuppressSearchSuggestions -bool true

This did the trick for me. Thank you @dauntingmountain

Nevermind, it reverted back pretty quickly. Still, thank you for the suggestion.

 

[SaguaroSeven]

Has anyone bothered by Spotlight's stupidity tried Monterey? I understand that a number of Big Sur "smaller issues" were pushed to Monterey to fix. Wonder whether any of this behavior might have changed?

 

[Arubalube]

This did the trick for me. Thank you @dauntingmountain

Nevermind, it reverted back pretty quickly. Still, thank you for the suggestion.

Just tried this too. No change, I'm afraid. Monterey or bust!

 

[gabrielferrari714]

Guys, I don't know if it will work for everyone, but you can try to search its content, and at the end use "-safari" or "-web" or "-safari.app".
I don't know if it will work for all people, in all countries, but it's a temporary alternative.

When you use "-safari", Spotlight will remove all Safari related content (including Stories and Bookmarks).
When you use "-web", it will only remove Web Searches.
.
Or.. my favorite (because it's more complete and specific) ... When you use "-safari.app", it will only remove Web Searches.

You can create a shortcut in system preferences > Keyboard, so the Keyboard can automatically type whatever you want.

You can see compare differences in PrintScreen below. 👇🏼

 

[Joz3d]

Yep, same problem, terrible!!

 

[bogdanw]

In the older versions of OSX, there used to be a key named MENU_WEBSEARCH in orderedItems of ~⁄Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist
I've tried to add it, with no luck.
In /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/Localizable.strings there is mentioned SEARCH_THE_WEB
I've added SEARCH_THE_WEB and MENU_SEARCH_THE_WEB to com.apple.Spotlight and all I got are some empty unselected options in System Preferences - Spotlight.
Any suggestions are welcomed.

 

[Arhanaman]

Yep, same annoyance about spotlight here. I remember you could easily add some extra keywords to apps. I like to type short names to start documents, photos or apps. But this search the web suggestion just keep on being on top. Aaargh!

 

[aleksdj]

Same problem here, I have a shortcut app that I want to trigger frequently, but it is always the second item in spotlight because the first one is the annoying web search... PLEASE apple add an option to remove web search...
The only "tip" that works is the -web text at the end of the search, but it's also pretty annoying to have to keep writing -web with all the searches...
In any case, I added a keyboard "text replace" with the "keyword" so it translate/expand to "keyword -web" and it works

 

[Arubalube]

Same problem here, I have a shortcut app that I want to trigger frequently, but it is always the second item in spotlight because the first one is the annoying web search... PLEASE apple add an option to remove web search...
The only "tip" that works is the -web text at the end of the search, but it's also pretty annoying to have to keep writing -web with all the searches...
In any case, I added a keyboard "text replace" with the "keyword" so it translate/expand to "keyword -web" and it works

I'm think that in earlier macOSs, you could not only exclude categories of item, you could re-order them, by dragging, in System Preferences > Spotlight. If you wanted it to be a web-search you did ⌘B. Perfect.

In Monterey—as I'm sure you've noticed—you can't re-order items in SP/Spotlight but you can un-check them...it's just that 'web search' is not listed, so you can't turn it off and it's top of the search finds.

This seems like the sort of thing that you can revert to old, better behaviour with in Terminal but I've no idea how to.

Yes, text expansion is really useful—If we're sharing hacks:

1. In Spotlight you can jump through each category of item using ⌘↓.
2. I've de-cluttered Spotlight search items as much as I can. E.g., I've ended up omitting Apps and using a shortcut for Launchpad instead; searching in Mail and Contacts are infrequent so they've gone from Spotlight; I'd rather go to the app and search from there.

 

[SaguaroSeven]

1. In Spotlight you can jump through each category of item using ⌘↓.
2. I've de-cluttered Spotlight search items as much as I can. E.g., I've ended up omitting Apps and using a shortcut for Launchpad instead; searching in Mail and Contacts are infrequent so they've gone from Spotlight; I'd rather go to the app and search from there.

Another tip: if you press the Command key, the path to the highlighted item will appear at the bottom of the preview on left side. (I'm pretty sure this was removed in Big Sur, and put back, because the overlay is transparent when viewing preview of a text document.)

PS: in Big Sur you could not reorder results either.

 

[Arubalube]

Oh yeah ⌘ in Spotlight displays the item's file's path. Thanks—good to know.

I still have the transparent background overlay thing going on (macOS 12.01). With text-based files the path looks like a very difficult CAPTCHA!

I've also noticed that you can't click up-stream parts of the path to get to that location (which works in Finder). But still useful to quickly see where items live. I can imagine that I'll use this.

 

[bogdanw]

Spotlight keyboard shortcuts on Mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/spotlight-keyboard-shortcuts-mh26783/11.0/mac/11.0

Spotlight keyboard shortcuts on Mac​

Quickly search with Spotlight using keyboard shortcuts on your Mac.

Action	Shortcut
Open or close the Spotlight window	Command-Space bar
Show the preview area	Tab key
Move to the next result	Down Arrow
Move to the previous result	Up Arrow
Move to the first result in the next category	Command-Down Arrow
Move to the first result in the previous category	Command-Up Arrow
Show the path of a result (such as a file) on your Mac (if the preview area’s displayed, the path is shown at the bottom of the preview)	Command
Open a result	Return key
See a file in an app or the Finder	Command-R or Command-Double-click
Open a Finder window with the search field selected	Option-Command-Space bar

If you use multiple input sources and have designated Command-Space bar and Option-Command-Space bar as shortcuts for switching between input sources, you must change the Spotlight shortcuts. On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Keyboard, click Shortcuts, then click Spotlight.

 

[arobert3434]

Guys, I don't know if it will work for everyone, but you can try to search its content, and at the end use "-safari" or "-web" or "-safari.app".
I don't know if it will work for all people, in all countries, but it's a temporary alternative.

When you use "-safari", Spotlight will remove all Safari related content (including Stories and Bookmarks).
When you use "-web", it will only remove Web Searches.
.
Or.. my favorite (because it's more complete and specific) ... When you use "-safari.app", it will only remove Web Searches.

You can create a shortcut in system preferences > Keyboard, so the Keyboard can automatically type whatever you want.

You can see compare differences in PrintScreen below. 👇🏼

Could you expand on the keyboard shortcut part? I can see I could make a text expansion from some short string of characters to "-web " but I don't know if that's what you meant. What I'd really like is to define an action that opens spotlight and types "-web " in one go, leaving it ready for you to type, but the Shortcuts app has neither a way to open Spotlight nor to type characters.

 

[KALLT]

I'm think that in earlier macOSs, you could not only exclude categories of item, you could re-order them, by dragging, in System Preferences > Spotlight. If you wanted it to be a web-search you did ⌘B. Perfect.

In Monterey—as I'm sure you've noticed—you can't re-order items in SP/Spotlight but you can un-check them...it's just that 'web search' is not listed, so you can't turn it off and it's top of the search finds.

This seems like the sort of thing that you can revert to old, better behaviour with in Terminal but I've no idea how to.

Yes, text expansion is really useful—If we're sharing hacks:

1. In Spotlight you can jump through each category of item using ⌘↓.
2. I've de-cluttered Spotlight search items as much as I can. E.g., I've ended up omitting Apps and using a shortcut for Launchpad instead; searching in Mail and Contacts are infrequent so they've gone from Spotlight; I'd rather go to the app and search from there.

I remember that the custom ordering of Spotlight results was removed in El Capitan.

One thing to note: if you disable (certain) Spotlight categories then this will affect Finder’s categorisation as well if you are sorting or grouping files/folders by “kind”. For instance, if you disable the “PDF documents” category in Spotlight then all PDF files in Finder will be grouped into “Other”.

 

[pphil]

Same problem for me. I do not see any reasons why web searches should be mixed up with local search. If I had wanted to do a web search, I would have opened my browser.
Apple here is doing a bad thing here:

• This is like being distracted by unwanted ads (in a payed product!!)
• It compromises our privacy (as it posts search terms to the web)
• It introduces an unexpected and unnecessary security risk (opening a browser can always bring you to a malicious site, and you would not expect hat in a local search)
• It leads users to forget about the difference of local storage and the web, training them to forget about the basics of privacy and data protection

Sad to say, it looks like Apple is no better than Microsoft here – this suggests they are more interested in distracting us (and maybe even getting our data) than making a good product. In many respects, Apple has been better than others, having less clutter on the devices. But here, I am very disappointed by Apple's ignorance – we did pay enough for our Apple devices to not be distracted that way, didn't we?

 

[madonnaragu]

Same problem for me. I do not see any reasons why web searches should be mixed up with local search. If I had wanted to do a web search, I would have opened my browser.
Apple here is doing a bad thing here:

• This is like being distracted by unwanted ads (in a payed product!!)
• It compromises our privacy (as it posts search terms to the web)
• It introduces an unexpected and unnecessary security risk (opening a browser can always bring you to a malicious site, and you would not expect hat in a local search)
• It leads users to forget about the difference of local storage and the web, training them to forget about the basics of privacy and data protection

Sad to say, it looks like Apple is no better than Microsoft here – this suggests they are more interested in distracting us (and maybe even getting our data) than making a good product. In many respects, Apple has been better than others, having less clutter on the devices. But here, I am very disappointed by Apple's ignorance – we did pay enough for our Apple devices to not be distracted that way, didn't we?

I agree. We should at least have an option to disable web results.

 

[dannid]

I was having the same - or so I thought - problem, but the icon next to my unwanted spotlight suggestions was the Safari icon, but I switched my default browser to chrome and the spotlight icon didn't change. I also disabled Siri suggestions, ran the defaults write com.apple.Safari commands, tried using "-web" and "-safari" but nothing was helping. Finally, through random chance, adding a space moved the suggestion I didn't want down a notch and gave its category a header: "Bookmarks & History". Aha! I found a bookmark that happened to match my search term and deleted it, solving the problem.

(My specific problem was that I'd once had a bookmark for my previous work google drive. Even though the base URL was normal, Spotlight was concealing some additional login information forcing my through the company SSO page, which of course I couldn't access anymore.)

 

[pphil]

Well, I have switched off EVERYTHING in the Spotlight settings. Guess what remained in the results: The web search.

 

[BiochMiker]

I'm running Mac OS 12.4 and this is my biggest issue with it (so far). First option in Spotlight is web search. I frequently use Spotlight to open files that I'd rather not navigate to through the menus. It's just easier to open Spotlight, bang out enough of the filename for the file I want to be recognized, and stab the return key. I didn't even have to look! Now, I have to watch out or I'll end up searching for my filenames on the internet. Thanks, Mac. I hate it.

Siri suggestions are unticked. It isn't possible to reorder the suggestions. All I want to do is search my Mac and now it's more difficult. I've complained on https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html. I'd encourage everyone else to do the same for whatever good it will do.

 

[Arctic Moose]

Bump.

Not fixed in 12.5. Still no reasonable solution?