Look up a technical term

UTI (Uniform Type Identifier)

macOS’s name for a kind of file or data. public.jpeg identifies JPEG images. It is different from a filename ending such as .jpg.

Conformance and supertype

A “kind of” relationship between types. JPEG conforms to image; image is a supertype of JPEG. A type can have several parents, so its relationships can form a graph.

Declaration

Information an app or component supplies about supported types. A declaration describes advertised support; it is not a successful rendering test.

Candidate and ambiguous match

A candidate declares support for the inspected type or a related type. An ambiguous match has several equally specific candidates, leaving macOS’s actual choice unknown.

Extension, bundle, and importer

A filename extension is an ending such as .txt. An app extension is a component such as a Quick Look provider. A bundle is a packaged folder containing a component and its declarations. A Spotlight importer extracts metadata for search; it is separate from a preview provider.

Identifier

A name identifying a type, application, or component. A provider’s identifier identifies the component, not the type of your file.

Metadata and Spotlight

Metadata is information about a file, such as its title or dates. Spotlight is macOS’s indexing and search system. Available metadata does not guarantee that every search system has indexed the complete file.

Sandbox, grant, and security-scoped bookmark

The sandbox limits an app’s access. Selecting a folder gives this app a read-only grant to that location. A bookmark is a saved record for reopening a selected location; it is not a copy of the file or unrestricted permission.

Coverage and coverage gap

Coverage describes what an operation checked. A gap is something it could not fully inspect, such as an unreadable folder, unsupported document, or failed model evaluation.

OCR (optical character recognition)

Reading visible text from an image or scanned page. Recognition can contain mistakes and does not describe everything shown in a picture.

On-device model and context

An Apple Intelligence text model running on the Mac. Its context is the amount of text it can consider at once. The app processes long readable documents in smaller pieces and produces concise judgements for those pieces.

Semantic search, semantic index, and embeddings

Semantic search tries to match meaning rather than just literal words. A semantic index stores information for meaning-based retrieval; embeddings are numerical representations used by such systems. This app’s natural-language mode interprets readable files locally. It does not reveal Apple’s embedding vectors or prove that a system semantic index is ready.

LaunchServices

The macOS service that tracks applications and their registered file-opening roles, including viewer and editor associations.

Related: Understand the report · Provider matches