Trawl vs Spotlight: what is the difference?
Spotlight is free, built into every Mac, and best for opening apps and finding files by name or by exact words inside documents. Trawl is a searchable memory of your Mac: it finds documents by what they mean, photos and screenshots by what is in them, the moment something was said in a recording, pages and YouTube videos from every browser, text you copied, and what you did hour by hour. It also searches hidden and system folders that Spotlight skips. Trawl costs $6 a month or $49 a year after 2 free days; Spotlight is free.
The built-in way (free)
- Use Spotlight (⌘ Space) when you know the file name or an exact word inside it.
- Use Spotlight to open apps, settings and quick calculations. Trawl does not replace it.
- Spotlight also shows some Safari history and, on macOS 26, a short clipboard history.
With Trawl
- Press ⌥ Space and describe what you remember: "the lease for the Grand Baie flat", "the video about neural networks".
- Press ⌘ D or type "what was I doing tuesday afternoon" to see your day.
- Limits: Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later only; meaning search works best in English; optional smart ranking sends your search and result names to a server (switch it off to stay fully local).
Questions
Can I use Trawl and Spotlight together?
Yes. Trawl opens with ⌥ Space and leaves ⌘ Space to Spotlight.
Is Trawl faster than Spotlight?
Both answer name searches in under a second. On the maker's Mac, Trawl searches its own index in milliseconds and the whole disk by name in about half a second.
Files, photos, recordings, every browser and your clipboard, searched by meaning on your Mac. Your day, hour by hour. Nothing uploaded.
Download for Mac2 days free · macOS 26+ · Apple siliconRelated
Updated 2026-10-11.