If you are in the middle of typing a complex financial email and need to quickly calculate a 20% tip on a massive restaurant bill, or if you need to instantly convert 400 kilometers into miles for an upcoming travel itinerary, opening the dedicated Calculator application or launching a web browser to search Google is a massive, unnecessary waste of time. Apple has cleverly built an incredibly powerful, lightning-fast calculation and conversion engine directly into the Mac’s core system search tool, Spotlight.
How to Access the Spotlight Calculator
You can access this hidden mathematical engine from absolutely anywhere in the operating system without ever touching your mouse.
- Look at your Mac keyboard and press the Command + Spacebar keys simultaneously.
- The Spotlight search bar will instantly appear hovering in the direct center of your screen.
- Instead of searching for a document or an application, simply type your math equation directly into the empty search bar (for example, type
85 * 0.20).
Viewing the Instant Results
The speed of this feature is what makes it so incredibly useful.
- Before you even press the Enter key, Spotlight will instantly process the equation and display the correct mathematical answer immediately below the search bar in massive font.
- If you want to copy the answer to paste into your email, simply press Command + C while the result is highlighted, and then press the Esc key to instantly dismiss Spotlight and return to your work.
Using Spotlight for Live Currency Conversions
This engine is also a powerful, internet-connected conversion tool. If you type 400 km in miles, Spotlight will instantly calculate the precise distance. If you are shopping online and type 500 USD in EUR or 50 GBP in USD, Spotlight will instantly pull the latest, live financial exchange rates from the internet and display the perfectly converted result in a fraction of a second.