[xd1936]

It's a reference to Sherlock (and later Spotlight) being added to macOS, rendering the previous third-party search-launcher tools obsolete.

[cavoirom]

Thank you, I learned it today. On the other side, some users replaced Sherlock (Spotlight) with Alfred.

[fastball]

And somewhere in there Quicksilver was pretty popular. And now in 2026 the main competition is Raycast. An evergreen space really.

[MBCook]

I think the Sherlock thing was in the OS 8 or OS 9 days whereas Spotlight didn’t come around until sometime in macOS X, maybe 10.4 or so?