Jason Snell gave the new Spotlight a real shot. When he reviewed macOS Tahoe last September, he stopped using LaunchBar and stuck with Spotlight for months. He liked it. Then the betas got worse.

Spotlight got progressively slower for him. It missed entire categories of items, like Safari favorites. The new “Quick Keys” text shortcuts only work for Actions, which Jason called “completely beyond me.” In the linked post, Jason surrenders and goes back to LaunchBar.

I am really pleased to see Apple improving Spotlight annually, and I hope they continue to do so. For the vast majority of users, they are not going to buy a third-party application like LaunchBar, Alfred, or Raycast.

That said, I don’t see myself abandoning Alfred anytime soon. The dedicated launchers still (and always will) do things Spotlight doesn’t.