Sherlock was replaced by Spotlight and Dashboard in 2005 with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, although Apple continued to include it with the default installation.

Since most of the standard plug-ins for Sherlock provided by Apple itself no longer function, it was officially retired and removed in the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in 2007.

The Sherlock 3 search plug-in was a web application, which was downloaded on the fly from a server to ensure the most current version.

Advocates of Watson made by Karelia Software, LLC claim that Apple copied their product without permission, compensation, or attribution in producing Sherlock 3.

[citation needed] The phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants or obviates third-party software is so well known that being Sherlocked has become an accepted term used within the Mac and iOS developer community.