[as2]

Well,

If i'm honest, I surprised myself when I got asked this by a friend the other day.

You'd have thought a simple answer of 'Finding Stuff' would pretty much cover all the bases, but then I realized that I probably use Spotlight to find one or two main types of file, but even that wasn't what I use it for most.

What DO I use Spotlight for more than anything else...

As an Application Launcher!

I'm not sure how many other people do this, and I'm not talking for iTunes and Safari, but for the applications that I don't keep cluttering up my dock, but use on a fairly frequent basis anyway, such as the Terminal, or GarageBand.

I find myself pressing Apple-Space and typing the application name all the time. Press down on the keyboard and enter.

Less mouse clicks, means I don't have to navigate through my application folder to find the right one... it's just there... Opening ready for me to use.

Anyone else got novel uses for Spotlight?!

[CharlesS]

I use it for searching developer documentation and e-mail.

Yes, I realize that each of those two things has its own search facility, but nothing's as convenient as command-space.

[wadesworld]

Charles,

Just curious, what method did you use for having it index the developer documentation? (As I recall, it does not do so by default).

Wade

[CharlesS]

Three steps:

1. Find the /.Spotlight-V100 folder and open the file in it named "_rules.plist" with vi, emacs, or pico

2. Add the string "/Developer/ADC Reference Library" to the INCLUDE array

3. Write an angry bug report to Apple about why this is not indexed by default

BTW, mdimport -f doesn't work for this, because it'll still refuse to search the folder if you try to search from within that folder in the Finder (but not in the menu bar Spotlight search).

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by as2

As an Application Launcher!

I use Quicksilver for that. Same deal, but more streamlined for launching applications.

[jasong]

I feel bad for the people having problems with Spotlight because I have found it to be amazing. Just today I needed to find a price quote I got for movers. I knew at some point I sent it to my fiancee, but couldn't remember if I IMd it to her or emailed it. Didn't matter, I fired up Spotlight, typed in the name of the moving company, and within seconds had the email with the quote information.

So to answer the question, I use it as a launcher and a search facility.

A cool enhancement would be to have the magnifying glass pull down in the search field that had a customizable list of kind: in it. It would make specifying criteria so much easier.

[as2]

Originally Posted by jasong

I feel bad for the people having problems with Spotlight because I have found it to be amazing. Just today I needed to find a price quote I got for movers. I knew at some point I sent it to my fiancee, but couldn't remember if I IMd it to her or emailed it. Didn't matter, I fired up Spotlight, typed in the name of the moving company, and within seconds had the email with the quote information.

So to answer the question, I use it as a launcher and a search facility.

A cool enhancement would be to have the magnifying glass pull down in the search field that had a customizable list of kind: in it. It would make specifying criteria so much easier.

It lists by Kind though, so you pretty much have that, and if you need more advanced options just use the Spotlight window.

I think the whole point of the menu is that it's so simple and doesn't require you to fiddle round with drop down boxes, just type and select!

[Chuckit]

Or you can just type "kind:whatever".

[monkeybrain]

Yeah, I'm with Chuckit. if you use it as an app launcher you should try Quicksilver instead - it's a lot faster (since it remembers what you launch regularly and puts that at the top of the list). Plus you get all the benefits of its other stuff (iTunes control, multiple clipboards and that it looks gorgeous too).

[MartiNZ]

I use it as an application launcher for things not in my dock , and otherwise mainly to quickly open .plist files ... at the moment it's the Safari preferences one to fix its silly window position thing.

[Theodour]

Yeah, application launcher.

[MrForgetable]

i rarely use it at all. as an application launcher, i prefer quicksilver. also because when i click it, it lags. and i don't like the laggy feeling. maybe i should get more RAM...

[mpancha]

- search mail
- currently putting together a little pre wedding website so I use it to search for photos right now as well

I realize mail and iphoto have their own search, but can't beat command space.

[fortepianissimo]

What's annoying to me, is that if you decide to turn Spotlight off, you lose search in Mail.app...

[as2]

Originally Posted by fortepianissimo

What's annoying to me, is that if you decide to turn Spotlight off, you lose search in Mail.app...

Why would you turn Spotlight off?

[eevyl]

To relaunch QuickSilver

[Cadaver]

I use it as a way to search through 100+ scientific PDF files. Great for when I want to find only the articles that pertain to a certain subject, or discuss a specific item. I used to use Acrobat's indexing feature for this, but its very cumbersome. Spotlight does this instantly, and is always up to date whenever. I don't even bother to organize the files anymore. They're all simply in a folder called (you guessed it) "PDFs."

[chris v]

Finding things. And making slideshows. I made my first Smart™ Folder® today!

[Dale Sorel]

Pr0n

[Zadian]

I use Spotlight to find contents, files and bookmarks.

I have a rather big collection of bookmarks in Safari. Well organised in "folders" and "subfolders" - with Spotlight I'm able to find the bookmarks much faster, using the Spotlight menu or the search field in the Safari bookmarks window. Most of the time I use the Spotlight menu for searching bookmarks.

I have many files (well organised in the Finder), but most of the time I just use the Spotlight menu to find the files I need - based on their contents. No more remembering file names :-)

In the open/save dialog I use Spotlight to go very fast to the folder I want to save my file or to the file I want to open. This is much faster than searching the folder or file in the Finder.

I never use Spotlight as an application launcher.

From time to time I use Spotlight to find other kinds of meta data (shutter speed, ISO-setting, aperture or last opened, changed...).

[brutal]

App launcher.

[fortepianissimo]

Originally Posted by as2

Why would you turn Spotlight off?

The mds process seems to have its own mind and takes down my CPU from time to time.

[albook]

Searching my documents...

[Superchicken]

I get frustrated because Spotlight finds EVERYTHING when I only want a few things. Like say a graphic I made... I'll type in a word that I know is in the title, and it'll find all sorts of stuff that I wasn't even looking for. Also I think the spotlight window that pops up should have the option to filter soley to a certain kind of file. IE if I'm looking for a .psd I don't want my mail up in there.

[Randman]

Chicken, do a kind: search. For example, for a pdf, type in kind: pdf and search. You can also do things like kind: photo, kind: document, etc. Spotlight searches can be refined pretty easily.

[Chuckit]

It does. If I search for "logo kind:image", it will not turn up a single e-mail.

[CharlesS]

The kind: keyword works, as long as you use one of the predefined kinds Spotlight knows about. Unfortunately, if you try something that isn't, like kind:jpg, you'll get every file, e-mail, PDF, etc. on your system which contains both the word "kind" and the word "jpg". It would be nice if Spotlight could fall back on something like searching to see if any files have an extension, type code, MIME type, UTI, etc. that contains the bit I searched for instead...

It would also be nice if there were a "name:" keyword.

Hmm, feedback time...

[Toyin]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

I use it as a way to search through 100+ scientific PDF files. Great for when I want to find only the articles that pertain to a certain subject, or discuss a specific item. I used to use Acrobat's indexing feature for this, but its very cumbersome. Spotlight does this instantly, and is always up to date whenever. I don't even bother to organize the files anymore. They're all simply in a folder called (you guessed it) "PDFs."

This has been the best thing about spotlight. I've got a number of medical journal articles. I used to print them and file the hard copies. I only kept digital copies of key articles. Now with spotlight I can keep the PDF articles and do a much better search for specific content. I'm also keeping a lot more medical update emails which can be searched instantly with spotlight.

For application launching I still use Quicksilver. It's much faster for finding applications and files and folders that you know the name of.

[torifile]

Mostly for searching emails. (I use DEVONthink for my pdf files.) I've been relying on it more and more lately to find things I'm too lazy to look for (i.e., I know where it is, but don't feel like going through the multiple folders to dig it up).

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

1. Find the /.Spotlight-V100 folder and open the file in it named "_rules.plist" with vi, emacs, or pico

2. Add the string "/Developer/ADC Reference Library" to the INCLUDE array

I've been toying with this, and can add a thing or two about Spotlight's silliness.

Before I did the steps above, I tried **Finder** searching the ADC Reference Library folder (from right there in the window toolbar). Searching there for the word "Spotlight" (no, I didn't use the quotes) produced 9 hits (Folders: SpotlightQuery -- Images: mt_spotlightsearchfield.gif, spotlight_contextual_search.jpg, spotlight_data_collect.jpg, spotlight_query_results.jpg -- HTML: SpotlightAttrs.html, SpotlightQuery.html, SpotlightWindow.html, WhatIsSpotlight.html).

So it appears -- without any special tinkering -- Finder will do a basic filename search at least.

Then I edited _rules.plist as per steps 1 and 2 above, and -- after that -- while Spotlight from the menubar (command-space) could get a bunch of stuff from ADC... Finder still produced the same 9 hits. (This is what we would "expect", right?). Okay...

Originally Posted by CharlesS

BTW, mdimport -f doesn't work for this, because it'll still refuse to search the folder if you try
to search from within that folder in the Finder (but not in the menu bar Spotlight search).

Yeah... sort of.

Here is what I discovered. I said "the heck with it...
I'm gonna 'import' the whole darn Developer folder".

mdimport -f /Developer

About an hour layer, I opened the Developer folder and typed "Spotlight" in the toolbar search-slot. Bang... 311 hits (all coming from inside the "ADC Reference Library" of course). So it worked... from there in the Developer folder anyway.

Now **HERE'S** what I find to be very strange: if I move down from Developer into the ADC Reference Library, and try the same search... do I see those 311 hits I just got (from above in Developer)?... Nope, all that produces is the same 9 items I got back at step zero.

How screwy is that?

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis

I've been toying with this, and can add a thing or two about Spotlight's silliness.

Before I did the steps above, I tried **Finder** searching the ADC Reference Library folder (from right there in the window toolbar). Searching there for the word "Spotlight" (no, I didn't use the quotes) produced 9 hits (Folders: SpotlightQuery -- Images: mt_spotlightsearchfield.gif, spotlight_contextual_search.jpg, spotlight_data_collect.jpg, spotlight_query_results.jpg -- HTML: SpotlightAttrs.html, SpotlightQuery.html, SpotlightWindow.html, WhatIsSpotlight.html).

So it appears -- without any special tinkering -- Finder will do a basic filename search at least.

Only for the folders which are hard-coded to be excluded. Folders in the Privacy pane won't even turn up filenames that match.

Then I edited _rules.plist as per steps 1 and 2 above, and -- after that -- while Spotlight from the menubar (command-space) could get a bunch of stuff from ADC... Finder still produced the same 9 hits. (This is what we would "expect", right?). Okay...

I forgot to mention that you have to use mdimport to actually index the files after you do this. You might have to relaunch the Finder, too - not sure about that.

Here is what I discovered. I said "the heck with it...
I'm gonna 'import' the whole darn Developer folder".

mdimport -f /Developer

About an hour layer, I opened the Developer folder and typed "Spotlight" in the toolbar search-slot. Bang... 311 hits (all coming from inside the "ADC Reference Library" of course). So it worked... from there in the Developer folder anyway.

Now **HERE'S** what I find to be very strange: if I move down from Developer into the ADC Reference Library, and try the same search... do I see those 311 hits I just got (from above in Developer)?... Nope, all that produces is the same 9 items I got back at step zero.

Uh, that's what I said.

Originally Posted by CharlesS

BTW, mdimport -f doesn't work for this, because it'll still refuse to search the folder if you try to search from within that folder in the Finder (but not in the menu bar Spotlight search).

As I said, it doesn't work when you try to search from within the folder (in your case, the ADC Reference Library). Even if you use mdimport -f to force the files to be indexed, the Finder still honors the hard-coded exclusion if you try to search from that folder or a subdirectory.

Of course, when I tried this, it worked as expected after I changed the _rules.plist file. You didn't change that back or anything, did you?

[Hal Itosis]

Well, I think that if we can import /Developer and search from there **in Finder**,
yet -- because of that exclusion -- we still can't go to the ADC folder itself and search,
then... Spotlight's setup, user interface, and entire premise is way MORE convoluted
and crazy, than was communicated by your initial post. (It wasn't clear to me anyway).

Originally Posted by CharlesS

You didn't change that back or anything, did you?

Nope. At the time of my post yesterday, all was still intact
(I checked with sudo more /.Spotlight-V100/_rules.plist).
But looking again today, the INCLUDE array seems to be
empty again. (What... does a restart flush it out?) Oh my.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis

Well, I think that if we can import /Developer and search from there **in Finder**,
yet -- because of that exclusion -- we still can't go to the ADC folder itself and search,
then... Spotlight's setup, user interface, and entire premise is way MORE convoluted
and crazy, than was communicated by your initial post. (It wasn't clear to me anyway).

I didn't outline it as clearly as possible, because I've mentioned it more thoroughly in other threads already.

Nope. At the time of my post yesterday, all was still intact
(I checked with sudo more /.Spotlight-V100/_rules.plist).
But looking again today, the INCLUDE array seems to be
empty again. (What... does a restart flush it out?) Oh my.

No, most likely the Finder or something had the old plist cached in memory and wrote it out to the _rules.plist file at some point. What I'd probably do would be to change it and then immediately restart before anything can change it back.

I'd also make sure that you use the proper XML syntax. Make sure you change the empty <array/> to an <array> and </array>, and similarly enclose the path in <string> and </string>.

[JHromadka]

I wish it would index package contents for applications. Would make it easier to find and edit text and jpg files for them.

[eddiecatflap]

i find the finder and spotlight virtually unseable unless i copy and paste the exact word in

if i start typing , the beachball comes up and i have to relaunch the finder


i probably need a faster mac.. ?

[AuPhalanx]

Hi, all!

I, too, am enjoying Spotlight. I use Spotlight a LOT to search PDFs. I refer to a bunch of them like many who have posted here and it's AWESOME to just type a snippet of a phrase and have the PDF(s) right there.

One thing I did not see mentioned is using Spotlight to get a contact. THAT is a very nice feature that I use all the time. Forget opening Address Book and either scrolling through the list or typing in the search box; just hit Spotlight, type part of the name, and BANG!--there it is.

Have fun... Tony.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by AuPhalanx

One thing I did not see mentioned is suing Spotlight to get a contact. THAT is a very nice feature that I use all the time.

Don't you think bringing legal action against a computer is a little extreme?

[AuPhalanx]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Don't you think bringing legal action against a computer is a little extreme?

Chuckit!

Not at all! With all the class action law suits floating around these days, I thought that I would cash in on the action. In other news, I fixed my typo. Thanks for the good laugh!

Have fun... Tony.

[Pr0c32]

I basically use it to launch apps that aren't in my dock (ex. Photoshop, Limewire, VLC, etc.)

[CaptainHaddock]

Since we're resurrecting an ancient thread here, here's how I use Spotlight after 6 months of having Tiger.

I use Spotlight from the menu bar for:
1. Looking up contact info - it's easier than going to Applications and finding my Address Book.
2. Finding obscure documents and invoices.
3. Finding fonts that I have archived but not installed.

I also frequently use Spotlight in:
- File-Open dialogs to quickly find the file I want.
- Mail
- Adium, to search old conversations for work project details.

Additionally, I have a smart folder that collects all my invoices.

[RevEvs]

Finding Stuff....

I dont open the finder if i dont have to

[dru]

I hate Spotlight. I start typing and BOOM I get a beachball and a window full or stuff before I get my term put in. And more ridiculous if I do a search with criteria, the damned thing starts searching if I just select something like a KIND without a search term put in yet! They need to make it so there's a *trigger* before it searches. Also smart folders suck because they're not kept up-to-date in the background. They start searching all over when I switch too them. WTF is up with that?<P>

It's marginally useful.

I've been loading Sherlock from Classic to search by file name. Maybe if we all had quad-G5's, we'd be in great shape.

[leperkuhn]

Originally Posted by dru

I hate Spotlight. I start typing and BOOM I get a beachball and a window full or stuff before I get my term put in. And more ridiculous if I do a search with criteria, the damned thing starts searching if I just select something like a KIND without a search term put in yet! They need to make it so there's a *trigger* before it searches. <P>
.

agreed. i never even bother with it due to performance.

dual 1ghz g4, 2 GB ram.

[OAW]

Like a lot of others, I primarily use Spotlight as an app launcher for those items that aren't in my dock.

OAW

[CaptainHaddock]

Originally Posted by dru

Also smart folders suck because they're not kept up-to-date in the background. They start searching all over when I switch too them. WTF is up with that?

I agree that's a problem. Smart folders are fine as long as you have a Finder window open in which you've viewed the smart folder. But opening it for the first time sucks, and opening smart folders in Open and Save dialog boxes sucks. I've filed bug reports on these issues.

Paul

[jmgriff]

Personally I'm a devoted Quicksilver user. My experiences of spotlight have been very mixed. It is useful certainly for quickly locating files, but I find that with hundreds(+) of pdfs on my system it isn't very smart about returning relevant results in relation to keywords. My biggest success with spotlight has been to implement 'tagging' of files using spotlight comments (via Quicksilvers Set Comment action) as I do with de.licio.us or gmail. I can then track files associated with specific projects via smart folders.

Also, why Apple chose to disable a simple filename search in the Finder is beyond me ... spotlight isn't good at finding system files or plists.

[jkandell]

Originally Posted by as2

Well,
What DO I use Spotlight for more than anything else...
As an Application Launcher!

I no longer keep a million aliases/shortcuts on desktop, it's quicker to use spotlight.

[Tesseract]

I think I have typed the following into the Spotlight search field more than any other search combined (note that I don't use Spotlight much at all)...

"Terminal"

Great when I need to get some 'real work' done on someone else's machine and they don't keep the Terminal in their Dock.

[Pierre74]

Originally Posted by jmgriff

Personally I'm a devoted Quicksilver user. My experiences of spotlight have been very mixed. It is useful certainly for quickly locating files, but I find that with hundreds(+) of pdfs on my system it isn't very smart about returning relevant results in relation to keywords. My biggest success with spotlight has been to implement 'tagging' of files using spotlight comments (via Quicksilvers Set Comment action) as I do with de.licio.us or gmail. I can then track files associated with specific projects via smart folders.

HoudahSpot brings back simple plain search. Much like Mac OS 9 find or UltraFind.

To that it adds the ability to express complex queries using boolean operators: All files name '*reference*', but not '*preference*', ...

And then there are templates: they act either as pre-build searches for you to complete or like smart folder.

Moreover HoudahSpot is smart about presenting results. No silly grouping. File location is immediately visible. The file or its parent folder are revealed with a single click, ...

Originally Posted by jmgriff

Also, why Apple chose to disable a simple filename search in the Finder is beyond me ... spotlight isn't good at finding system files or plists.

I am afraid Apple was mostly right about this. The average user ought to have his/her files in her home folder. That's were they will be searching.

Geeks, advanced users, developers are pushed back to using command line tools or wrappers thereof. I for one am an avid user of locate. I have Macaroni update its index daily.

Pierre

[draggerman11]

I use it to categorize and organize all of my different documents for school into their appropriate folders (AP Gov, AP Econ, English, AP Psyc, et cetera) via smart folders, Spotlight comments and an Apple script that automatically places the correct Spotlight comment onto the file.

All I do is throw all of my documents into a new sidebar folder called "Items" and everything is automatically sorted. Beautiful!