Questions about Spotlight, a system-wide desktop search feature of Apple's Mac OS X operating system.
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1answer
146 views
Smart “Applications” folder
How to create a "smart" Applications folder that unifies the content of other three folders?
In my machine I have three versions of OS X installed (for testing purposes) in different partitions, each ...
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2answers
396 views
In Lion Spotlight search results, how do I find which folder contains a specific file?
I recently upgraded to Lion. I also installed Microsoft Office 2011. In Spotlight, how do I now find in which folder a document is? It used to be that hovering the mouse over the doc would show the ...
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1answer
310 views
Spotlight is disabled for my main volume
$ sudo mdutil -i on /
/:
Error: unable to perform operation. (-400)
No index.
Lately, I'm low on drive space on my main volume. But after I just deleted some stuff, the error remains:
$df -h
...
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2answers
144 views
Spotlight indexes wrong HD
Mac Mini Server, OSX Server 10.6.8, dual drive
I cloned the first hard disk (HD1) to HD2 using CCC, thus creating a bootable copy.
However, now I discover that when I startup from HD2, Spotlight has ...
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2answers
196 views
Spotlight can't find m4a files
I used to use Spotlight to directly start iTunes at a track I wanted to listen to by searching for it. However since upgrading to Lion I've not been able to do this with .m4a music files (mp3s still ...
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1answer
790 views
How to find a telephone number strored in contacts by searching for a substring on iPhone
I'd like to search my iPhone contacts using a part of a telephone number as a key (search by substring). The integrated spotlight search, however, doesn't return any entries when searching for a full ...
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1answer
60 views
What's wrong with my Outlook search?
Ever since doing OS X 10.8 updates, a pair of machines with Outlook refuse to look back further than 2 weeks during e-mail searches. Spotlight settings all look OK. I even forced an index ...
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1answer
142 views
Multiple languages for dictionary Look up in Spotlight
How can I handle several languages at the same time in Spotlight ?
When a word exists in several languages including english, Spotlight gives me results in english. I would like to have all the ...
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1answer
70 views
Spotlight's Privacy tab not backed up by Time Machine?
I just did a full restore from Time Machine and noticed that my Spotlight Privacy tab was empty. Am I correct in assuming that this information is not backed up by Time Machine? I believe it's stored ...
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1answer
167 views
OS X 10.5/10.6/10.7, Search, Spotlight
I'm handling a migration from an on old Mac server to a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine running a 12 TB (10 usable) RAID 5 server. It's using an SMB share and now the OS X 10.5/10.6 users can search - ...
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1answer
195 views
Why does mdworker keep spamming the logs on Lion?
After upgrading to Lion I keep noticing strange spamming of mdworker on the logs, even though there doesn't seem to be any noticeable CPU or IO work being done. The machine is snappy but I just can't ...
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1answer
59 views
Why does spotlight search for “term” result in AquaTerm before Terminal?
I have AquaTerm and Terminal both.
Whenever I do a search in the spotlight with query "term" it shows up AquaTerm before Terminal. Terminal matches better, so it should come first.
Why does ...
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2answers
415 views
Does Spotlight search work with a Time Capsule?
I would like to use a Time Capsule as a file server for 3-4 Macs in a small network.
I've 600 GB of data, and a lot of small files. My colleagues work a lot with Spotlight to find files. I would like ...
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1answer
533 views
Finder crashes when searching in spotlight or opening Applications folder
I have a non-admin account (Standard account) that I normally use on my iMac. For the past 2 days I have been having a really strange issue.
If I search for "Chrome" or "Firefox" on spotlight, ...
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2answers
470 views
Spotlight indexing of back up drive
I've seen some posts about whether you can stop spotlight constantly indexing your time machine backup drive. It seems you can't have it attached to your computer and not have it indexed.
I have been ...
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1answer
277 views
Do I need to re-index my Volume?
I recently installed a brand new HD in my macbook pro.
I did this by cloning the original drive.
Everything (almost) is working fine, but I did give the Volume a different name, it used to be ...
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1answer
214 views
Tips for using spotlight with webpages served via https
I've started using spotlight with webpages today. It will actually index the content of web pages in your history and bookmarks. It's great. But I can't find any documentation on how to use it.
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1answer
189 views
Make Spotlight show files on unmounted volumes
Is there a way to make Spotlight show files that reside in different unmounted Volumes?
I think there is no official way of doing this, and that Apple does not provide a plugin API that allows this ...
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1answer
20 views
Auto switch input source to English when entering Spotlight, typing URL in Safari, etc
I don't have files with non-english names, and don't type non-latin URL's, so question is how to auto switch system input source in these occasions.
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1answer
27 views
Spotlight not indexing attachments of exchange Mail
I recently got a MBP and really love how quick spotlight is. I'm reading my exchange email via the Apple Mail app. The messages are indexed by spotlight but the contents of the attachments are not.
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1answer
279 views
Rules for Spotlight search (on osx 10.8)
I absolutely do not understand the rules that Spotlight (osx 10.8) uses to search my files. If I enter the query sbml and select filename from the dropdown menu, these are the results that come up:
...
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2answers
379 views
Spotlight: Unable to index network SMB share
I'm trying to turn on spotlight for my NAS drive. I have it mounted in OSX 10.8.2 as the following:
/Volumes/Trogdor (smbfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by soltrain)
mdutil returns the following:
...
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0answers
77 views
“Displays” system preference not showing in spotlight
I've recently upgraded to Lion 10.7.5., though not sure if my problem is related. In spotlight, I can't get the "Displays" system preferences option to show up in the results. I've tried re-indexing ...
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1answer
224 views
How do I launch shell applications after changing shell to MacPorts bash?
I have installed a current bash version via MacPorts and changed Terminal.app to use /opt/local/bin/bash. Unfortunately shell applications won't launch from Finder and Spotlight anymore. (OSX 10.8.2, ...
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1answer
75 views
Performing unit conversions in Spotlight
Is there a way to perform unit conversions from within Spotlight? For example I want to convert 1 ft^3 to cm^3 in spotlight.
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0answers
208 views
Spotlight Woes! Can't search, can't reindex, can't find
Help!
Spotlight stopped working ... if I go to spotlight search (top right), it just hangs.
Same with Apple-F in Finder ... it causes Finder to hang for a minute or so. Cannot search.
I went to ...
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1answer
102 views
How to find out which file triggered an action from spotlight
I've created an applescript application (in automator) to open ssh urls. The application is bound to the ssh:// url.
I've got a lot of user@host.inetloc files and search these in spotlight. Selecting ...
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0answers
501 views
helpd uses 100% CPU after installing any application with documentation
I see that after installing a software that ships with documentation in OS X’s help document format, the helpd process uses 100% CPU for up to 5 minutes or so. I also see this when you first install ...
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2answers
85 views
Does the search in Finder need spotlight?
I just reinstalled OS X Lion and turned off the spotlight immediately.
I noticed that search in Finder stopped working. Is this because of disabling spotlight? Is there a way to get this back without ...
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1answer
88 views
Can Spotlight show results for disconnected drives?
I have several external hard drives which I would like to search for files with Spotlight. They cannot be all connected at the same time.
How can I get Spotlight results for offline external hard ...
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1answer
117 views
Spotlight and Alfred can't find Photo Booth
For some reason, neither Spotlight nor Alfred can find the Photo Booth app. The app clearly exists in the Applications folder, and it runs fine, but typing in Photo Booth to Spotlight only returns ...
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1answer
113 views
how to stop spotlight indexing an attached camera
When I attach my video camera (for the purpose of importing some clips into FCP-X) I noticed that spotlight is indexing the camera (which does show up as an external disk when I connect it, via the ...
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1answer
351 views
How do I add folders to spotlight search priority?
How do I add a system link to the Applications folder and have it show up in spotlight.
Alternatively how do I add a specific folder to spotlight search priority. Easy to rearrange but I can not add ...
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2answers
576 views
iPhone 4/4s Spotlight Search Problem
Spotlight Search on iPhone 4s doesn't show any results.
Everything is checked under Settings -> General -> Spotlight Search.
Restart doesn't help. New contacts don't appear.
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3answers
599 views
Keyboard shortcut for Spotlight doesn't work in full screen Google Chrome on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
I've noticed that the Spotlight Search keyboard shortcut (cmd space) doesn't work if I'm running Google Chrome (12.0.742.122) as full screen application in Lion.
Is this a Chrome-related bug or is ...
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2answers
965 views
How can I make spotlight ignore certain file types and directories?
Since spotlight continuously updates the index, sometime the file precedence gets changed around and I might type in "saf" and press return expecting to get Safari, but instead spotlight attempts to ...
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2answers
264 views
Finding Firefox bookmarks in Spotlight
Is there a program that will allow me to use Spotlight to search my Firefox bookmarks and open the browser window?
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1answer
28 views
Index screenshots
I want to be able to search through text in my screenshots that I made. Prizmo does the OCR feature pretty well and also has an Automator action provided. Unfortunately, though, I have no idea how to ...
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1answer
304 views
How to make Spotlight index PDF documents to search faster or on my command?
I need to search some words in many PDF documents. It worked very well when I searched over old documents but my OS X has not indexed yet the new PDFs. How can I search over the new PDFs?
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2answers
586 views
Stop Spotlight from indexing a drive that is regularly unplugged and reattached
I backup my Mac laptop to a volume on an external Thunderbolt drive using SuperDuper. This drive gets removed every day when I take my computer to work, then reattached when I get home. Because it's ...
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2answers
175 views
Sorting of Spotlight's search results is disabled in Lion
I can't sort Spotlight's search results - sorting by Name, Date Modified, et. al appears to be disabled. Google seems to be useless in finding a resolution to this - although I suspect a previous ...
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2answers
242 views
How would I restore Spotlight search to my menu bar? (10.7)
For some inexplicable reason, I decided to delete (not hide) Spotlight from my Mac via a terminal command. I downloaded the 10.7.2 update, hoping it would fix this by redownloading Spotlight, but it ...
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2answers
2k views
How long should Lion take to set up Spotlight?
I updated my Mac from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to Lion. Everything went well. The computer restarted when the OS setup finished. Now, Spotlight setup has been running for more than two hours. Is something ...
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1answer
101 views
Base computation via Spotlight?
Is there a combination of math functions I could use in spotlight to accomplish change of base ? I know I can do it on a case by case basis with normal algebra.
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1answer
154 views
Is there a QuickLook app that will highlight search terms within MS Word documents?
I have a client with a large number of Word documents that he needs to be able to search. He's been using Spotlight and Quick Look, which has worked pretty well.
He asked me if there was a way to ...
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2answers
37 views
How to find files not containing comment x?
I try to find all "*.xyz" files in folder x which does not have comment "abc". This code does the opposite. I would prefer to use Spotlight if possible. How i can do this?
Thanks
do shell script ...
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0answers
8 views
What backup methods preserve kMDItemDateAdded?
The attribute kMDItemDateAdded corresponds to the "Date added" column in the Finder, and is especially useful for the Downloads directory. Unfortunately, this attribute is not part of the filesystem ...
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2answers
177 views
Spotlight on mid-2012 MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion Constantly Re-Indexing
On my 4-month old mid-2012 MacBook Pro I observe that Spotlight seems to want to ALWAYS re-index. I frequently notice that the performance will get unbearably slow and I can hear the hard drive ...
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0answers
15 views
Is there a way to omit certain directories from where Mac OSX finds applications for its Applescript dictionaries et al?
Mac OSX maintains a list of applications for Applescript dictionaries, for the open-with list in finder etc.
This list gets collected from local directories (e.g. /Applications) but it finds as well ...
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1answer
32 views
Finder spotlight tool not “grepping” through all file types?
We've got this development stack that's mostly javascript, and if I'm looking for a variable definition or something I can use Finder's spotlight tool to easily find the file that contains the ...
