I’ve been using Raycast[0] to replace spotlight. Spotlight index kept randomly losing my /Applications dir, and like 90% of what I use spotlight for is Cmd + space > type in the name of the app I want to switch to/open. So it was a constant annoyance.

They have some AI stuff that they try to push on you during the install, but it can all be disabled so day to day it doesn’t bother you.

0: https://www.raycast.com/

Probably Alfred? It's been a while since I used a Mac, but back then Alfred was one of the reasons to get a Mac.

https://www.alfredapp.com/

Yeah though spotlight was never meant as a program launcher. KDE has a nice thing that is just that.