Mac computer is equipped with the system search feature known as spotlight search. It can also help search any keyword or phrase and open the web results on the web browser. By default, Macs have a Safari browser as a search engine; however, we can easily change to any other browser. We can set Chrome browser to open as Spotlight result destination browser.
Finding a particular file or folder from the many scattered across your Mac is never easy. This is where one of Apple’s most valuable features comes into play.
Dubbed Spotlight is a system-wide search feature that indexes all the files on your hard drives and brings up the results in seconds.
Apart from the local searches, it could also bring up the result from the web, which, when combined with Siri Suggestions, tends to add more to its overall feature set.
Whether reading emails, checking out the latest news or sports scores, or getting hold of the live weather conditions, there’s a truckload of things to try out.
However, it would open all these results inside Apple’s default browser, Safari. While it is a more than decent browser for your Mac, however, it might not be the best one out there. The users who echo this thought have already jumped ships over to Chrome.
So, if you also use the offering from Google, you would wish to interact with all the online and web-based content inside this browser. And this might include Spotlight’s results as well.
So, this guide will make you aware of the steps to open Mac’s Spotlight search results in the Chrome browser.
Open Mac’s Spotlight Search in Chrome
The Spotlight feature has been designed to display the search results inside the currently set default browser.
In this regard, Apple has assigned this default tag to the Safari browser; hence, the system-wide search functionality automatically opens all the results in the Safari browser.
It would be best if you changed your default web browser on your Mac to instruct it to open in any other browser,
Two different approaches exist- via System Settings and from the Chrome browser Settings. We have listed these methods below; you may refer to the one in sync with your requirement.
Here are the steps from System Preferences/Settings:
- Click on the Apple
from the menubar. - Select System Preferences/Settings from the sub-menu.
It will launch the System Preferences window. - Select General Preferences from the System Preferences window.
- Click on the Default web browser drop-down option list.
- Select Google Chrome from the list.
That’s it, and the selected browser will become the default browser in macOS.
If you do any Spotlight web search and open the result, it will automatically launch the Google Chrome browser.
Alternatively, we can set Chrome as the default browser from the Settings menu. Here are the steps to set from the Chrome settings page:
- Launch the Chrome browser on your Mac.
- Click on the Chrome menu from the menubar.
- Select Preferences… sub-menu from the list.
It will open the Chrome Settings page. - Switch to the Default browser tab from the left sidebar.
- Click on the button.
- Hit on button to make the switch.
It will change Chrome as the default web browser across the macOS system. Any links clicked across the Mac computer will launch automatically in Chrome instead of Safari.
As soon as you set Chrome as the default browser on your Mac using any of the two methods, all the web contents, including Spotlight’s search result, shall now open in the Chrome browser.
Bottom Line
We conclude the guide on how you could open Mac’s Spotlight search results in the Google Chrome browser. Moreover, this tutorial isn’t just limited to the Google-owned browser.
You could instruct Spotlight to open the results in any web browser, including Firefox, Opera, Edge, etc. All you need to do is change your default browser on MacOS.
I’ve set the Chrome browser for all the search results, and it works seamlessly without any issues.
Please let us know if you have any queries about changing Mac’s spotlight results and launching the browser.
Lastly, if you've any thoughts or feedback, then feel free to drop in below comment box. You can also report the outdated information.
