How can I view the items in the Spotlight cache?

Question

I'd like to view the data spotlight has imported. Is this possible?

EDIT: For example I can do this:

mdutil -svvv /Volumes/h8rdrive

and find out this volume was indexed.

I'd kind of like to find out what's not indexed though.

Er. Everything is indexed unless you explicitly tell it not to be. I think there are instances of external drives not being indexed by default, but I'd have to look it up. I suppose you could put together some conditions and pass them to find. — Harv, Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 6:29
@Fake Name - k, great. Colour me corrected. And submit a response, then. :) — Harv, Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 7:44
@Harv Spotlight indexes only "Everything within the scope of your permissions", but won't go to ~/Library/Cache or Preferences by default unless you activate "Other" in the config. Also, /System and such are not indexed. As for the OP's question, I'm not sure that there's a "Metadata" editor to read the index for a drive. But others may be more clever and come up with an answer. — Martin Marconcini, Commented Jan 27, 2011 at 9:55
By default, Spotlight indexes everything but Finder excludes system files from your searches. There's a way to change this in a Finder search (there are optional search parameters to include system files and invisible files), or use mdfind (e.g. mdfind -onlyin /System -name .framework). It also censors results to include only files you have permissions for; to see everything, search as root with sudo mdfind. — Gordon Davisson, Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 15:36

AllInOne · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-01 22:23:39Z

1

mdfind is your friend here.

If you simply wanted a list of every file in your spotlight index you could do:

mdfind /

You can also get it to provide a count of the files.

mdfind -count /

On my system this returns 224353 which is a good reason not to run the first command!

answered Jul 1, 2013 at 22:23

AllInOne

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