The brand new Highlight in macOS could also be the very best Siri various

Apple used WWDC 2025 to introduce various new options — a very overhauled design language, dwell translation options accessible throughout all of its working methods, and a number of AI-adjacent new abilities — however probably the most essential was the corporate’s rework of Highlight.

Spotlight is Apple’s title for the built-in search discipline you can entry on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS to seek for a file, a particular app, or data from the net. The characteristic is helpful throughout all the corporate’s gadgets, however is especially key on Macs, the place it is one of many easiest and most direct methods to search out issues with out leaping into the file hierarchies of Finder. Apple has added small options to Highlight over time, letting the search discipline reply math issues, present dictionary definitions, and pull up primary Wikipedia data. In macOS 26, it will go additional, letting Highlight carry out choose performance in apps with out even opening it, calling to thoughts Apple’s promised changes to Siri, and probably displaying a less complicated manner Apple’s gadgets may get smarter.

Concentration is going to quickly do much more than search

The characteristic is turning into one thing like a command line

Apple

Through the macOS Tahoe part of Apple’s keynote, the corporate demoed the brand new Highlight taking over anticipated duties like pulling up search outcomes, and even displaying apps which might be solely obtainable by means of a linked iPhone over iPhone Mirroring. However the brand new Highlight may take motion for you, too, leveraging the options of apps with out having to open them. That might be including an occasion to your calendar, enjoying a podcast, operating a Shortcut (now with the power to faucet into Apple Intelligence fashions) or, as Apple demoed, sending a message or e mail with out having to carry your palms off the keyboard.

This new a part of Highlight depends on the corporate’s App Intents framework, which lets builders establish content material and actions within apps and make them usable in every thing from Highlight to the Motion Button on the iPhone and Apple Watch Extremely. Apple initially pitched App Intents as being the important thing ingredient that may make its up to date model of Siri work, which may equally take motion within apps with a easy voice command, and might reference the non-public context of messages and emails to make extra knowledgeable selections.

Apple delayed the updated version of Siri in March 2025, however Highlight reveals a extra hands-on manner the essential idea may work, and actually, it is likely to be simpler to grasp and belief. Particularly given the lackluster efficiency of Siri traditionally.

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Highlight is quite a bit like Raycast and Alfred

Raycast / Pocket-lint

That this new Highlight feels simpler to know or perhaps extra reliable than a voice assistant relies partly on there being a number of notable apps which have tried to do the identical factor. Apple is fairly clearly attempting to repeat or emulate the options of apps like Raycast or Alfred, which add a search discipline and command line that may equally perform the performance of some apps.

At their most simple, Alfred or Raycast change Highlight, usually surfacing data extra naturally or looking out throughout a wider choice of data than macOS would possibly do naturally. However they’re additionally able to much more. Alfred can save snippets of textual content, entry your clipboard historical past, management your music app and run workflows of various actions throughout your pc. Raycast goes even further, changing options just like the macOS emoji picker, Apple’s window administration instruments, and loads of first-party AI chatbot apps. It additionally helps an ever-growing library of first and third-party extensions that may work along with your favourite apps and providers to get issues accomplished, not not like the brand new Highlight.

Apart from direct integration with macOS, the brand new Highlight would possibly be capable to run extra of its processes regionally, however the instruments appear remarkably comparable to one another. For anybody who hasn’t used Raycast or Alfred, Apple’s placing a friendlier face on what could be a fairly technical course of. And should you solely use the fundamentals of Alfred or Raycast, it is likely to be attractive sufficient to modify, too. Except you are taking a look at your display screen, you do not know if the voice assistant understood you or if it truly did what it stated it was going to do. There’s extra belief in typing for what you need and seeing that it is doing what it says it should.

Apple does not must complicate automating your pc

We is likely to be higher off typing out what we’d like

It stays to be seen whether or not Apple is ready to ship its revamped Siri. The corporate is reportedly eyeing an iOS 26.4 update in 2026 because the possible time when its new voice assistant debuts. Within the meantime, macOS 26 will launch within the fall and provides customers a style of automation and prompting that is likely to be satisfying sufficient. Do we actually want Siri in that case? I am unsure, however I am excited to see if Highlight does the trick.

When you’re ready for Apple to roll out its updates, there are macOS apps you can strive proper now that would vastly change how you utilize your pc. And should you’re particularly trying so as to add on new utilities like Highlight, Pocket-lint has just the list for you.