Productivity Hack: Optimize Mac Spotlight

If you're like me and use Spotlight for opening + focusing literally every and any application that you use, here's a quick tip that I use to ensure that the application you need is only one or two keystrokes away.

As a developer, I open Visual Studio Code a lot for my everyday work, but I like to keep my personal + hobby projects separate from my professional work. I do this by keeping my personal projects in the "Visual Studio Code - Insiders" app instead of the flagship "Visual Studio Code".

What happens though is that when I open Spotlight and type "v" and hit enter, it will sometimes open one app over the other. What I've found through trial and error is that Spotlight will default to whichever app (or folder, system setting, etc.) was opened in this manner in the past – that is, whatever I opened by typing only the letter "v" and pressing Enter.

So if I want Spotlight to default to opening the VSCode Insiders app with just "v" in Spotlight, I just arrow down to it and hit Enter. And if I want the non-Insiders version to open with, say, "vi" in Spotlight, I'll just type "vi", arrow down, and press Enter.

I've configured Spotlight to operate this way for several frequently-used yet similarly-named applications and have found it to increase my productivity and reduce frustration.