Sometimes you don't want your Spotlight to index some parts of your Mac, e.g. your backup drive. If that's the case, you can set up your Spotlight to prevent searching in several locations. This setting can be performed under System Preferences ▸ Spotlight ▸ Privacy. Adding that particular folder into the pane provided will result in Spotlight stop indexing that folder.
Besides doing logical expression, Leopard Spotlight can also do some mathematical calculations. Are you curious what are those functions?
I know a little bit about Java Programming Language, so I try to use the Math library, which contains some functions to do scientific calculations, on Spotlight. To my surprise, some of these functions work.
Here are some examples :
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.
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, 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, pdfs | |
| 12 | Preferences | system preferences, preferences |
| 13 | Bookmarks | bookmark, bookmarks |
| 14 | Fonts | font, fonts |
| 15 | Presentations | presentations, presentation |
Finder is really interesting.
In this article, I want to show you how to play around with label on Finder, only for Mac. I will discuss about how we can use Finder to label items, rename label and search labeled files.
I rarely use Spotlight. It's slower than Quicksilver.
However, I still want to continue discussing about this matter. Maybe this article will be buried or be criticized by most of people. It doesn't change the fact that spotlight is useless for me. I hate spotlight. I love Quicksilver
Spotlight in Mac is just like X-Ray in our real life. It can see through the skin directly to the bone of files. I mean, it can see the info of the files.
The procedure is quite simple, you just need to click the information icon at the right side of your file and you can see the hidden information of your file.
Even though the icon is rather small, I am sure you can find it because it spreads over the whole search page.
QuickSilver as reflects by its name, is the fastest application searching for Mac. But, its quickness affect its user too. Its user must have ability to quickly key in all the keywords required to open specific files (or they have to replay it all over).
In contradiction to Spotlight, one of the searching application in Mac. Spotlight can search everything you want, but not with the same quickness as QuickSilver. It always returns everything.
Which one do you prefer?
When searching for application, I prefer using QuickSilver. As I have experienced before, QuickSilver always returns apps that I want. Different from Spotlight that give me lots of result, it slows me down to look at what I want first.
Recently I just read this blog about quick spotlight tip. Maybe I will share my knowledge with you.
Feeling stress on finding specific file that buried inside the ton of files. Like searching a sand in the ocean. With Mac, you do not have to worry about that. Mac, just like a car, has a very powerful, very bright, and extremely smart Spotlight. Spotlight can search everything that you want. Whenever, wherever you need it, spotlight will show you the way. I mean, you can find it at every corner.
You can make yourself your own spotlight shortcut (if you have QuickSilver, you can open with spotp). And something like this will show up. You can see there is two kind of shortcuts for spotlight.
