I need to know the newest features of App Intents for macOS 26 + Spotlight; Can my mac app have a single macOS app target that has AppIntent and AppShortcuts?
Asked on 2025-09-08
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Yes, your macOS app can have a single app target that includes both App Intents and App Shortcuts. The App Intents framework allows you to model your app's actions as intents, which can be exposed across the system through App Shortcuts. This means that your app's core features can be made available in Spotlight and Siri, enhancing discoverability and usability.
For the newest features of App Intents in macOS 26 and Spotlight, the following updates are noteworthy:
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Spotlight Integration: App Intents can now be invoked directly from Spotlight on macOS, allowing users to run your app's actions without opening the app. This integration enhances the visibility of your app's features across the system (Develop for Shortcuts and Spotlight with App Intents).
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App Shortcuts: These are automatically exposed across the system, including in Spotlight, making it easier for users to access your app's functionalities. App Shortcuts are prominently featured when searching in Spotlight, and users can also use Siri to run them (Get to know App Intents).
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New APIs: There are new APIs that allow you to index your app entities in Spotlight, bringing powerful semantic search capabilities to your app (What’s new in App Intents).
These features collectively enhance how your app can interact with Spotlight and provide a seamless user experience across macOS.
Get to know App Intents
Learn about the App Intents framework and its increasingly critical role within Apple’s developer platforms. We’ll take you through a ground-up introduction of the core concepts: intents, entities, queries, and much more. You’ll learn how these pieces fit together and let you integrate your app through Apple’s devices, from software features like Spotlight and Shortcuts to hardware features like the Action button. We’ll also walk through how App Intents is your app’s gateway to integrating with Apple Intelligence going forward.
Bring your app’s core features to users with App Intents
Learn the principles of the App Intents framework, like intents, entities, and queries, and how you can harness them to expose your app’s most important functionality right where people need it most. Find out how to build deep integration between your app and the many system features built on top of App Intents, including Siri, controls and widgets, Apple Pencil, Shortcuts, the Action button, and more. Get tips on how to build your App Intents integrations efficiently to create the best experiences in every surface while still sharing code and core functionality.
Develop for Shortcuts and Spotlight with App Intents
Learn about how building App Intents that make actions available and work best with the new features in Shortcuts and Spotlight on Mac. We’ll show you how your actions combine in powerful ways with the new Apple Intelligence actions available in the Shortcuts app. We’ll deep-dive into how the new “Use Model” action works, and how it interacts with your app’s entities. And we’ll discuss how to use the App Intents APIs to make your actions available in Spotlight.