The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space.
replyFor many users, it is a strict downgrade that was forced on them against their consent.
I don’t want to make my search more ambiguous. That is the opposite of what I want.
replyThe existing search on macOS was almost completely useless to be fair
replySpotlight search has sucked from Day 1 of OSX. You need to use Find Any File [0] or some equivalent tool if you want to search the actual file system without being limited by Spotlight's never-properly-updated "index."
replyThe functionality of Find Any File was built in to Mac OS 9 and earlier. It was rock-solid reliable. So of course Apple removed it and now to get reliable search you have to use a third-party tool. Or 'find' in the Terminal.
Can it now consistently find things in /Applications when I type the full name?
replyThat's revolutionary.
No.
replyI made my own “pseudo spotlight” and mapped it to ⌘-Space specifically for this. It just goes against old fashioned locate/updatedb, but with a very quick check against /Applications first + running the search query through bc and if it’s valid syntax, showing the math result.