Spotlight not working for built in Mac apps

Solution 1:

Well, I figured it out. I did some trial and error using the Privacy tab in Spotlight settings and determined that if I add the /System folder to the list (i.e. tell Spotlight to not index it), then I can't access the built in apps via Spotlight.

After looking at the file system it became obvious why that is. All the built in applications are in the /System/Applications folder, whereas all the ones I installed myself are in the /Applications folder (which was not excluded in the Privacy settings).

This started happening after I upgraded to Big Sur so I'm not sure if Apple moved some things around or what, but there you go. Sanity restored.