[oddurs]

Problem

The panel was one rounded box with a flat list and a kind label on every row. It worked, but it read as a generic launcher rather than part of macOS 26, whose search field is a glass capsule with results on their own surface, grouped by kind.

Approach

• Two pieces of glass. PanelContent lays out the field's capsule and, 8 pt below, the results card, each an NSGlassEffectView (popover material with a mask before macOS 26) clipped to its shape so the window shadow follows both outlines.
• Sections. Results.compose now returns [ResultSection]: a Website, Conversion, or Calculator section first, then Top Hit, then Applications / System Settings / Files / Common Command, each placed by its best member (apps and files are merged by score first), then Search the Web. The selection steps through sections.rows in display order.
• Quieter rows. No "Application" label under an Applications header; topics show their pane's name; file paths truncate in the middle so they keep their start and end. "No Results" when nothing matches and web search is off. Calculations drop the "= " prefix: the header and icon already say it.
• A 0.12 s fade on open, none with Reduce Motion.
• Topic noise. Once grouped, the System Settings section was visibly full of noise for three-letter queries: "saf" listed Screen area for display (initials) and Lockdown Mode (keyword "safety"). Topics now match only where each typed word starts a word of the topic, in order, and keywords count from the fourth letter. Apps keep initials ("vsc").
• --snapshot renders offscreen into an image with solid surfaces, so reviewing a design never shows a window or takes focus.

Look at sceptically

• Glass can't be captured offscreen, so the renders I reviewed (light and dark, ten queries) used solid surfaces. The glass path is the same NSGlassEffectView setup as before, now twice; the shadow-clipping trick is unchanged.
• The pre-26 path (visual effect view with a mask image) still hasn't run on macOS 14 or 15.
• Grouping can place a lower-scored row above a higher-scored one in a later group. That's Spotlight's trade-off too: scanning by kind beats a strict score order.
• "dark" lists Files above System Settings › Appearance, because files with "dark" in their names outscore a keyword match.

Checklist

• scripts/task check passes locally
• Ranking changes include tests showing the order they fix
• UI reviewed with offscreen renders in light and dark