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Leopard - Optimizing Spotlight Search

In Leopard, Spotlight has been configured in such a way that it can search much faster than that of Tiger. Some Spotlight searching tricks below will certainly improve your productivity.

Adding Specific Keywords

By typing search terms as described above, you ask Spotlight to search only for certain type of file. However, you still don't know exactly what kind of keywords that can be used for this. Fortunately, Leopard happily provides you with detailed information regarding to that and here we will gladly deliver it to you.

. File Type Keyword
1 Applications application, applications, app
2 Contacts contact, contacts
3 Folders folder, folders
4 Email email, emails, mail message, mail messages
5 iCal Events event, events
6 iCal To Dos todo, todos, to do, to dos
7 Images image, images
8 Movies movie, movies
9 Music music
10 Audio audio
11 PDF pdf, pdfs
12 Preferences system preferences, preferences
13 Bookmarks bookmark, bookmarks
14 Fonts font, fonts
15 Presentations presentations, presentation

Focusing Search

Warning : The Spotlight Preference settings on the image above is not under copyright.

Spotlight indexes and searches everything on your Leopard. Though Spotlight returns the search result really quick, you still need to filter the result which will slow you down. Image above displays the path, which is Menubar ▸ Apple ▸ System Preferences ▸ Spotlight Preferences, and the way to enable/disable some of the categories of your Spotlight search, which can be done by ticking/unticking the check boxes.

Determining Action

16 Return Open highlighted file with default application
17 Cmd-Return Open file in Finder

Most of the time the first action will be taken. However, you still need to aware of the existence of the second action, which will take you to your file location, for performing further action. For more complete keyboard shortcuts, you can refer to my other article, which lists down almost all useful keyboard shortcuts for Leopard, entitle Mac OS X Leopard: 200+ Productivity Booster Keyboard Shortcuts.

Activating Icon View, Quick Look or Slideshow

18 Option-Return Show all results in Finder
19 Cmd-A Select all files
20 Cmd-Y Quick Look
21 Cmd-Option-Y Full Screen Slideshow
22 Cmd-1 Icon view

If your purpose is to search for images, photos, or movies, you can use Quick Look, which is the new feature in Leopard, Slideshow or Icon view to view all the search results. Combining this with the first trick, adding specific keyword, will further improve your productivity. Also, Show Index Sheet while in Quick Look or Slideshow is advisable.

Double-Quote for Exact Phrase

Whenever you know exactly the phrase that you want to search, don't be hesitate to use Double-Quote. With phrase put in between Double-Quote, Spotlight will return the searching result of several separate words as an unity.

Utilizing Spotlight Window

23 Cmd-Space Open Spotlight menu
24 Cmd-Option-Space Open Spotlight window
25 Cmd-2 List view
26 Cmd-4 Coverflow view

There are several benefits you can achieve from utilizing Spotlight window instead of using single Spotlight menu :

  1. Wider range of results
  2. Easier to extract more information
  3. More advance feature, such as sorting results, view as list, or view as the Leopard new feature coverflow

Mastering Logical Expression

23 NOT [term] Result doesn't contain the term
24 [term-1] AND [term-2] AND ... AND [term-n] Result contains all term-1, term-2 up to term-n
25 [term-1] OR [term-2] OR ... OR [term-n] Result contains one of the terms
26 Parentheses Set the priority of the logical operation (NOT-AND-OR by default)
27 NOT ([term-1] OR [term-2] OR ... OR [term-n]) Result doesn't contain all of the terms
28 NOT [term-1] AND [term-2] OR [term-1] AND NOT [term-2] Also known as Exclusive-OR, which the result MUST contain one of term-1 and term-2

That are many more logical expressions that can be build by using only NOT, AND and OR. However, those above that we listed are really useful and come in handy for your searching activity.

Extra: Calculator

I don't know it's considered time-saving to perform calculator in your Spotlight. But for sure, Spotlight supports this feature. To use Spotlight's calculator, simply put the arithmetic expression to your Spotlight, but you should avoid hitting Return or your Spotlight will launch Calculator for you.

We've tried our best to bring up this article. Feel free to drop comments, we will gladly accept any suggestions.

Categories: Popular, Spotlight
Tags: Leopard, Spotlight

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79 Comments

Dan Madigan 

This is very hepful. I didn't know Spotlight could do all that. However, in Tiger I had mail messages excluded in spotlight. In Leopard I do not have mail messages selected in the preferences pane but they show up anyway, cluttering up the results. Any idea why this could be?

MIKO 

Awesome advice!  It helps a lot.  Thanks.  I feel empowered.

Marty2000 

I tried all kind of keywords and file names, but always ZERO search results. It doesn't matter, what i type, as soon I finish typing kind: all results are already zero. Something i can do wrong? some settings i can't find? Or different keywords for the GERMAN Mac OS X 10.5.6?

Wendy 

Hi Marty, I haven't tried it out with German version of Mac. Maybe German word of 'kind' would do the job?

EDL 

That's all useful and what not but I generally don't need Spotlight as I know where my files are, a logical folder structure and naming helps.



But what I would need Spotlight for, is searching for files I don't create myself, namely system files, preferences, files installed by applications. If I do need to remove an application for example, I search for the app and that should bring up all files that contain its name. This however only brings up the folder containing it and any eventual files inside that folder. It does not bring up any system or preference files. I still have to manually check multiple folders for leftovers. I know that there are Uninstall apps that would take care of this but they either cost money, are not thorough, cause performance hits by logging all activity in the background or all of the above. So I don't like them and Spotlight could help a lot in that regard. 



So my question is; is there any way of having Spotlight search other locations other than the ones defined by Apple (Where does Spotlight search? http://support.apple.com/kb/TA23187)? - Thanks~

EDL 

Just found my answer...



http://www.mactricksandtips.com/2008/07/search-system-folders-with-spotlight.html



Cheers

Gian-Pa 

You can also look immediately for filenames instead of content (in Finder) by pressing Cmd-Shift-F

cya

Christiane 

HELP!
How do I search for a file on the network? When I put the file name in Spotlight, it only searches my desktop folders and Entourage. All my working files and folders are on the network and can't seem to be able to search for them with Spotlight.

David Morgan 

Actually, this link only tells you how to search SYSTEM folders, which is already one of the Spotlight search options.

I used to be able to search within any location I wanted, back when the Find command was truly separate from Spotlight. So what about the original question: How do you search in locations that are more specific than "My Computer" and "Documents"???

FYI, I HATE Spotlight because it makes so many assumptions what "you" want to do, plus, it makes it damn hard to do a lot of things that you might really want.

Hmm... maybe was really written by MicroSoft??

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for the german users:  http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/de/15155.html

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FYI, I HATE Spotlight because it makes so many assumptions what "you" want to do, plus, it makes it damn hard to do a lot of things that you might really want.

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