Add Spotlight keywords for improved discoverability

[richtabor]

Related issues

• Related to user feedback on X that the installed app is hard to find when searching for "WordPress" because the app name is just "Studio".

How AI was used in this PR

Codex was used to inspect the Electron Forge packaging configuration, test how macOS Spotlight reads app bundle metadata, and apply the focused metadata change. The resulting diff was reviewed and validated locally.

Proposed Changes

• Add macOS MDItemKeywords metadata to the packaged app via Electron Forge packagerConfig.extendInfo. This is scoped to macOS app-bundle metadata and does not change Windows or Linux package metadata.
• Include WordPress, WordPress Studio, WP, and local WordPress development as Spotlight keywords so the app can be discovered by WordPress-related searches without renaming the app bundle.

Testing Instructions

1. Build a packaged macOS app:

npm run make:macos-arm64

2. Replace the installed app with the packaged app, or copy it to /Applications/Studio.app.

3. Confirm the packaged plist contains the metadata as a comma-separated string:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print :MDItemKeywords' /Applications/Studio.app/Contents/Info.plist

Expected output:

WordPress, WordPress Studio, WP, local WordPress development

4. Force Spotlight to re-import the app bundle and inspect the indexed metadata:

mdimport -i /Applications/Studio.app
mdls -name kMDItemKeywords /Applications/Studio.app

Expected output should include WordPress in kMDItemKeywords.

5. Verify the app can be found through a WordPress keyword query:

mdfind "kMDItemKeywords == '*WordPress*' && kMDItemContentType == 'com.apple.application-bundle'"

Expected output should include:

/Applications/Studio.app

6. Optional manual check: open Spotlight and search for WordPress; Studio should be discoverable.

Local validation run on this branch:

npm run typecheck
npx prettier --check apps/studio/forge.config.ts
npx ts-node -e "import config from './apps/studio/forge.config'; const keywords = (config.packagerConfig as any).extendInfo?.MDItemKeywords; if (typeof keywords !== 'string' || !keywords.includes('WordPress')) process.exit(1); console.log(keywords);"

Note: npx eslint --fix apps/studio/forge.config.ts currently fails because apps/studio/forge.config.ts is outside the repo's ESLint TypeScript project service configuration.

Pre-merge Checklist

• Have you checked for TypeScript, React or other console errors?

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR improves macOS Spotlight discoverability for the Studio app without renaming the app bundle, by adding keyword metadata to the app’s packaged Info.plist via Electron Forge’s packaging configuration.

Changes:

• Add packagerConfig.extendInfo.MDItemKeywords to the macOS app bundle metadata.
• Include WordPress-related terms (WordPress, WordPress Studio, WP, local WordPress development) as Spotlight keywords.

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[ivan-ottinger]

Nice improvement! The change looks good and works as expected:

➜  studio git:(codex/add-spotlight-keywords) /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print :MDItemKeywords' /Applications/Studio.app/Contents/Info.plist
WordPress, WordPress Studio, WP, local WordPress development
➜  studio git:(codex/add-spotlight-keywords) mdimport -i /Applications/Studio.app
➜  studio git:(codex/add-spotlight-keywords) mdls -name kMDItemKeywords /Applications/Studio.app
kMDItemKeywords = " WordPress Studio,WordPress, local WordPress development, WP"
➜  studio git:(codex/add-spotlight-keywords) mdfind "kMDItemKeywords == '*WordPress*' && kMDItemContentType == 'com.apple.application-bundle'"
/Applications/Studio.app

The only thing I noticed is that kMDItemKeywords is not formatted nicely:

kMDItemKeywords = " WordPress Studio,WordPress, local WordPress development, WP"

but when researching it further it looks like to fix that we would need to introduce keywords per each locale.

Considering the feature is working as expected and the issue is cosmetic, I don't think it is worth engineering extra code just for that. Approving. ✅ 🙂

[sejas]

Thanks for improving the spotlight keywords. LGTM!

[wpmobilebot]

📊 Performance Test Results

Comparing 1a44a9d vs trunk

app-size

Metric	trunk	1a44a9d	Diff	Change
App Size (Mac)	1378.88 MB	1378.88 MB	+0.00 MB	⚪ 0.0%

site-editor

Metric	trunk	1a44a9d	Diff	Change
load	755 ms	1073 ms	+318 ms	🔴 42.1%

site-startup

Metric	trunk	1a44a9d	Diff	Change
siteCreation	6534 ms	6495 ms	39 ms	⚪ 0.0%
siteStartup	2386 ms	2388 ms	+2 ms	⚪ 0.0%

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Results are median values from multiple test runs.

Legend: 🟢 Improvement (faster) | 🔴 Regression (slower) | ⚪ No change (<50ms diff)