Spotlight and Live Text vs DejaShot for screenshots

Searching your screenshots doesn’t need an app. macOS has done part of it for years, for free, and many people never need more. This page sets out what Spotlight and Live Text do according to Apple, where they stop, and what DejaShot adds, so you can decide whether the built-in tools are enough. The longer walkthrough is in the guide to searching the text in screenshots on a Mac.

I made DejaShot, so weigh that. Everything said about Apple here comes from Apple’s own pages, listed at the end, and I checked them on 1 October 2026.

What are Spotlight and Live Text, and what do they do?

They are two separate parts of macOS that work together.

Live Text recognises text in images. Apple’s Preview guide says it lets you copy text, look up its meaning, translate it and search the web for it. Apple adds that Live Text “isn’t available in all regions or languages.”

Spotlight is the search you open with ⌘Space. Apple’s iMac guide for macOS Tahoe 26 says: “With Live Text, Spotlight can search for text in images (available in select languages).” Apple’s Ventura announcement in October 2022 described the same thing, searching by text inside images.

So a word you type into Spotlight can match a screenshot that contains it. That costs nothing, needs no install, and covers the whole Mac, not only screenshots.

How do they compare with DejaShot?

Where do the built-in tools stop?

Apple documents some of these limits itself. The rest follow from what Apple’s pages don’t say.

• Languages. Apple’s feature availability page lists the languages Live Text supports, including English, Chinese, Cantonese, French, German, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese, each in listed regional variants. Apple’s Ventura announcement also mentions Japanese and Korean. Don’t count on other languages.
• Indexing takes time. Apple says indexing happens when you set up a Mac, after an update and as data changes, and that it “can take hours or even days” depending on how much data you have. A very recent screenshot may not be searchable yet.
• Excluded folders. Spotlight skips the folders and disks listed under Search Privacy in its settings, so a screenshot saved there won’t appear. The guide on when Spotlight isn’t finding your screenshots covers how to check.
• No source app. The pages above describe searching text in images. They don’t describe searching by the app a screenshot came from, and a screenshot’s file name holds only the date and time. I haven’t found a Spotlight attribute for it either.
• Everything is in one pool. Spotlight searches apps, files, actions and the Clipboard. On macOS Tahoe 26, ⌘2 narrows it to files, but a screenshot still competes with every other file that matches the word.

I can’t give you a timing for Spotlight. I haven’t measured how fast it answers, and Apple doesn’t publish a figure.

Choose Spotlight and Live Text if…

• You search your screenshots now and then. For the occasional lookup, typing a distinctive word into Spotlight is quick and free.
• You mostly want the text from one screenshot. Open it in Preview, select the words and copy them. There’s a guide to copying text from a screenshot.
• Your screenshots are in a language Live Text reads. English, Chinese, German, Italian and the others on Apple’s list are covered, some only in certain regions.
• You’d rather not install anything. That is a fair reason on its own.
• You’re happy with a search across the whole Mac. Spotlight finds apps, documents and screenshots in one place.

If that is you, stop here and keep your money. These tools are good.

Choose DejaShot if…

• You remember the app, not the words. “figma pricing” can find a pricing page you captured in Figma even when the word Figma isn’t in the image. That works for screenshots taken while DejaShot is running. Older ones have their text and date but no app. Filters such as app:figma and after:march narrow it down. Reading window titles needs the optional Accessibility permission, and DejaShot reads every screenshot without it.
• You take screenshots instead of notes. DejaShot gives them a library of their own, with a timeline that groups them by day, so you can scroll back instead of guessing a word.
• You want a search that is only about screenshots. Press ⇧⌘Space from any app and the panel opens over what you’re doing. You can choose a different shortcut if that one is taken. A search across 20,000 screenshots takes 31 ms. At the 95th percentile, on an M2 Pro, measured in the search engine itself.
• Spotlight keeps missing them. DejaShot reads the folders you choose, starting with the newest, and the first 200 are searchable shortly after you set it up.
• You want it to stay private. There’s no account, and your screenshots and their text are never uploaded.

DejaShot isn’t a screenshot tool. It doesn’t capture, annotate or record anything.

Can you use both?

Yes, and most people will. DejaShot doesn’t replace Spotlight or turn it off. Keep using Spotlight for apps, documents and the odd screenshot, and use Live Text in Preview to copy the words out of an image. Open DejaShot when the thing you want is a screenshot and you remember where it came from or roughly when. Both read text on your own Mac, so they don’t get in each other’s way.

Questions about Spotlight, Live Text and DejaShot

Does Spotlight search the text inside screenshots?

Yes, in select languages. Apple’s iMac guide for macOS Tahoe 26 says Spotlight can search for text in images with Live Text. It can only find what it has already indexed, and it skips folders you’ve excluded.

Is Live Text the same as Spotlight?

No. Live Text recognises text in an image so you can select, copy, look up or translate it. Spotlight is the search. Spotlight uses Live Text to look inside images, but Live Text doesn’t search your Mac by itself.

Do I need DejaShot if Spotlight already finds my screenshots?

Not necessarily. If a word you remember finds the file, the built-in tools are doing the job. DejaShot helps when you remember the time rather than the words, or the app for screenshots taken since you installed it, or when you want a library of screenshots to browse. The pricing page has the one-time cost.