Spotlight "Search the Web" Now Buried Under Results in macOS 26

Hello everyone,

Today I upgraded to macOS 26, and so far, everything is running smoothly without any technical issues.

However, I’ve noticed a significant change in how Spotlight handles web searches. In previous versions, I frequently used Spotlight to perform quick web searches. I could simply type a query, and if Spotlight didn’t find any matching local results, it would show the “Search the Web” option right away. Selecting that would instantly open my default browser and perform the search.

Now, Spotlight seems to return a huge number of local results for almost any query. As a result, the “Search the Web” option is pushed all the way to the bottom, often requiring several seconds of scrolling to reach it. In my opinion, this makes the feature almost obsolete.

Is there any way to open Spotlight directly in a “web search” mode, or to prioritize the “Search the Web” option again?

Thanks in advance for any insights!