frustrated with spotlight..

T

tagraves

Registered
Does anyone have a suggestion about how to reconfigure Spotlight (maybe an applescript? something at which I am barely a novice) so that it can be used in a more precise way? I get terribly frustrated with the way it will start searching as soon as you type, and would love to disable that. Also, I really don't need it to display every possible type of file that might have the combination of letters I've typed (or mistyped). Generally I know roughly what I'm looking for and I don't need to see every mp3 and photo and pdf on my system.

The bottom line is that I find spotlight so frustrating to use that I will almost always just search by poking around instead of calling it up (I know, that's generally slower, but it makes me feel rightous). But if it were possible to be able to type in more than three letters (like, say, an entire word) and then actually hit "enter" to start the search I would find it much more palatable.

Any solutions out there? Thanks.
 
You can try the spotlight search window - Apple + Shift + spacebar - that brings up a nice box and allows you to have a bit more control.. But, I hear ya.
 
I read a tip just recently about setting up Spotlight to search only after you hit return. I just looked for it but can't find it quickly. It was probably on macoshints.

I'm pretty satisfied with Spotlight now that I understand it better. It's doing a whole lot of things and it's pretty quick all things considered. I use it quite a bit.

The more you use it the more accurate it gets at finding the kind of things you want and you don't have to wait for it to stop searching. As soon as it sees what you want just click it.

Also: Make sure you set up its preferences so as to sort things the way you usually want them.
 
Not sure on Apple's web page this is, but I copied it to Apple works for reference:

Spotlight "kind" Keyword List: *(Taken from apple.com)
------------------------------

*Applications
kind:application, kind:applications, kind:app
*Contacts
kind:contact, kind:contacts
*Folders
kind:folder, kind:folders
*Email
kind:email, kind:emails, kind:mail message, kind:mail messages
*iCal Events
kind:event, kind:events
*iCal To Dos
kind:todo, kind:todos, kind:to do, kind:to dos
*Images
kind:image, kind:images
*Movies
kind:movie, kind:movies
*Music
kind:music
*Audio
kind:audio
*PDF
kind:pdf, kind:pdfs
*Preferences
kind:system preferences, kind:preferences
*Bookmarks
kind:bookmark, kind:bookmarks
*Fonts
kind:font, kind:fonts
*Presentations
kind:presentations, kind:presentation

Spotlight "date" Keywords:
--------------------------
Spotlight also lets you zero right in to the information you are
looking for by using date related information. As you know, the
Spotlight window lets you look at your results by date by clicking on
the "Any Date", "Today", "Since Yesterday", "This Week", "This Month"
or "This Year" controls in the results window. But, you can add date
keywords to your search phrase so that the search will only return the
files that have been opened in the date range that you care about. For
example, if you search for "Yosemite date:today", only those items
related to Yosemite that have been viewed today will be listed.

Here's the complete list of date ranges that you can specify:
date:this month
date:this week
date:this year
date:today
date:yesterday
date:tomorrow*
date:next month*
date:next week*
date:next year*

*No, Spotlight isn't totally psychic about the files your colleagues
will send someday. Rather, use next month, week and year for finding
upcoming calendar appointments.
 
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