Questions tagged [search]
The act of searching for data by providing keywords which are either checked directly against contents, or against a search index in order to provide relevant results.
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Search in finder folder doesn't work - Mac OS Ventura
I'm trying to search in finder in specific folders. The search works on ''my Mac'' or in spotlight but not in the folder in question. I've tried the spotlight-privacy trick, tried reinstalling the OS, ...
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Apple Mail: Search and smart folders no longer work
Several weeks ago, Apple Mail on my MacBook Pro M1 running Ventura suddenly no longer showed any e-mails in my smart folders (such as "Today" or "Unread"). Also, Mail's search was ...
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How to list the content of a whole drive to keep it searchable when disconnected?
I would like to keep track of what files I have on the external drives where I store everything I do not need to access every day. Still, I would like to have some way to know what drive I should ...
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Thousands of random files (.h, .py, .res, .str, and more) in Finder searches
To preface, I'm not a developer, and I had a MacBook Pro previously for many years which did not do this, which is why I'm looking for a solution.
Currently, whenever I search anything in Finder, I am ...
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Ventura not showing actual file name in search results
When I search for AIF audio files in Finder, it shows me the file name "utf8". This is the media title, apparently. There does not appear to be a way for Finder to show me the file name.
...
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Spotlight always 1 Search Behind
Have the strangest issue on my computer. Let's say I go to Spotlight and search "ABC" -- it displays the results from the search I made previous. So now if I reopen Spotlight and search &...
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how to search files which contains some string in macOS
I want to search files by string in macOS, now I am using this command:
grep -r "docker/build-push-action@v2" .
this command is very slow, is there any better way to search string from ...
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Can Apple Mail perform a server side IMAP search (and if so, how)?
I have a dovecot IMAP server that is configured with full-text-search, including Apache Tika with OCR support. This allows me to search within attachments, including image attachments. Using dovecot ...
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Problem using Numbers Regex.Extract function
I need help with the following Apple Numbers REGEX.EXTRACT formula that doesn’t return the word before a dot. Below are the text form of the arguments passed to the formula and the formula itself as ...
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Safari setting to inform preferred language for Google search?
The goal is to configure my IOS ecosystem (iPad, iPhone, MacBook) to return Google searches in English. Is there a Safari setting to realize said goal?
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How can I determine the folder containing a file found in a Spotlight search in Ventura?
It used to be that, when I did a search in Spotlight, I could determine the folder containing the file by holding the Command key while the mouse was over the name of the file or the file was selected....
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How does the Search operation in iOS Settings work?
If I enter "accelerometer" into the Search bar of Settings in iOS 16.5 on my iPhone X, the results seem to include practically every "Accessibilility" settings page. Are they all ...
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Using Apple Music's "Up Next" feature from search
I'm using macOS Monterey v12.6.1.
In Apple Music, I can search for a term and it displays many songs that match with this term. How can I play all the songs in this list one after the other as if it ...
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How to find Couples only photos in Apple Photos
How do I search couples photos? I want to find photos that contains exactly the two people, and no one else.
When we do the following, it provides photos that has both the people, and other folks as ...
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Why didn't reverse grep work to filter out "Operation not permitted" from find results?
When I want to reverse grep the words in macOS 13.2 like this:
$ sudo find / -name "libpq.dylib" | grep -v "Operation not permitted"
find: /Library/Application Support/com.apple....
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Search on all sheets in Google Drive on iPhone
In the Google Drive app, I can search all sheets for some text. But it just lists the files containing that text. If I click on a particular spreadsheet, the spreadsheet opens, but it doesn't move to ...
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Search file content in iCloud Drive
Is there a way to search file content in iCloud Drive? For example, in Google Drive or OneDrive, when you search, you'll get results not just by name but also any PDF or Word/Docs file where the ...
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Is there a setting to fix Finder listing files that do not match the search string?
Running recent versions of macOS Finder, searching for files containing a text string, the results include some apparently-random selection of files which clearly do not include the specified string.
...
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How to find (and copy) files using a list of keywords
I have a folder with a lot of subfolders that have certificate files in pdf format in them. I have a list of certificates I want to copy.
I need to send a bunch of certificates - 66 out of 500 to a ...
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Finder search file not working, but Spotlight able to find the file
My macOS Ventura can't search any file in the Finder (top right).
I already add the folder in System Preference -> Spotlight (added) User folder.
My Spotlight can search by filename, but Finder top ...
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How to include .git folders or files from .git folders in spotlight index?
There is a very old question about excluding .git folders form Spotlight index.
Apparently macOS today by default excludes content of .git folders, since on macOS Ventura, files residing in .git ...
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Google search page sometimes disappeared when clicking Safari's back button
I'm using Safari 16.3 (17614.4.6.11.4, 17614) on macOS Monterey 12.6.3 (21G419) but this problem has been around for many years and Mac systems.
Sometimes I go to Safari browser, open a new window and ...
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How to find all files with double quotes in name on a mac
I tried to find all files with double quotes in name in the search field in Finder. When I just put " in there, it's not finding any such files.
Also it suggests Name contains " in a ...
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Spotlight: Show recently opened files of application
With macOS Monterey (and before) it was possible in Spotlight to show the recent files of an application before opening the application.
E.g.:
Open Spotlight (Command Space)
Search 'Pages'
Arrow down ...
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How to search in Finder for date created = a specified day of the week
Is it possible to use a Finder search to display all files created on a Monday, or on a Tuesday, etc.?
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Macos not searching Ubuntu file share
I have a ubuntu server 22.04 setup and it is sharing files using samba.
The mac computer can connect to it and use the files just fine. My problem comes in when i try and search for a file or folder ...
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Can Spotlight index HTML files on Mojave?
Spotlight doesn't index HTML files on my machine. In the prefpane there's no option for webpages or .htm or .html file extensions. Google can't find a plugin for these files. I have 36,703 such files ...
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Applescript to Search a Text File for a specific value and then copy that value into a string
EDIT #2
@CJK and @mockman
so using both your ideas I've created this god awful long script that does the trick for the first offset value in the xml and first marker value shown in the xml
Now the ...
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Why does Spotlight search no longer work after a system update?
After a recent system update (to Catalina) Spotlight stopped working. Additional symptoms:
I could add volumes to the Spotlight>Privacy list and then remove them with the - button but it made no ...
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MacOS Ventura-Apple Mail: How to search text string in message body
On 24 Feb 2021, user Aivar Paalberg answered a similar question: <<I agree that this is cryptic. But by default it do search whole message. And it works also following way: write into search ...
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Indexing and searching comments inside PDF files
I'm searching for an app capable of indexing/searching not just PDF files content, but also the comments and revisions inside them - some of the docs I'm using have more than 1000 comments...and the ...
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Notes app: search inside scanned document
How do I get to the detailed search result within a camera scanned document in the Notes app?
If I create a note on my iPhone, and use the camera to "scan" a document, it looks like the ...
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Searching for an exact phrase in PDF with Preview
I used to do this all the time. For example, I'd search for "blue house" (two words, with double quotes) and it would find the text "the blue house on the corner", but not "...
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Is there a suitable alternative to mlocate for macOS?
I would like to replicate the functionality of mlocate (not findutils) from Linux in macOS. I've tried the following alternatives, but each has its own downside:
findutils: only world-readable files ...
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Limit recent files to specific folder(s)
The recent files section is showing many system files, how can it be cleaned up?
Here's my current search criteria
I couldn't limit it to specific folders
Here's what I tried so far. I couldn't find ...
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How do I search a folder excluding one specific subfolder?
I have this folder structure:
Photos
|- Bangalore
|- Sydney
|- Videos
How do I search in Photos excluding the Videos subfolder?
I don't want to permanently exclude the subfolder from Spotlight, just ...
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Change order of search results (Siri) on modern iOS?
Legacy iOS versions had a Spotlight area in Settings > General to control the order of the results.
I cannot find any such setting on iOS 16. Is it no longer possible? For example, I would like ...
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117
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Apple Mail save search function not working
It used to be easy to save a mail search as a smart mailbox. After Monterey they changed the user interface. Now when you do a search a "Save Search" button appears. But it is always dimmed ...
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301
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Finder Search, Outlook search not working after Migration Assistant
I migrated from a 2015 MacBookPro to a new 2022 MacBook Pro with M1. The MacOS was updated as part of the Migration process to 12.5.1.
Finder and Outlook Search worked fine on the 2015 laptop.
Finder ...
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268
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Why does Finder not search Python (.py) files for content?
I want to search all my .py files for a certain expression, but it seems that Finder does not look at their content. Is this normal? What can I do?
(This question was also raised here.)
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Find password protected files on macbook pro High Sierra
Is it possible to search for password protected Microsoft office (word or excel) files? I have forgotten some passwords and am trying to recover them. I noticed a password protected file is not '...
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How can I force macOS's "look up" feature to use my default browser to search?
In system preferences, I have my default browser set to Google Chrome.
When I am using Chrome, if I select a word and force-click it, I get the usual dictionary pop-up, but if the word is not found in ...
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How to reset Spotlight's suggestion heuristics?
When I search for an app by name, Spotlight usually finds that app before it makes other suggestions. But when I was first setting up this new laptop, I mistakenly chose the web-search item for "...
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Can I revert Apple Mail to its previous behavior with regard to the search box?
In Mac OS 10.14.6 and earlier, when I searched in Mail, it would filter whatever folder I was viewing, but then if I clicked on a different folder I would be shown the full contents of that folder.
...
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Tab equivalent for Mac while searching from website in chrome bar
For ex.
In Windows Chrome if you type youtube.com on bar and press tab it enables a textbox to search on youtube, What's the equivalent in Mac OS?
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Configure Spotlight to follow symlinks or search multiple paths
When using the search box in a Finder window, I would like to configure Spotlight so that a search will follow symlinks in the directory tree below the folder being searched.
For example, I symlinked ...
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1
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305
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How can I restrict Searches in iBook on my iPad to only the content in my Library?
I have been using iBook as a songbook so have hundreds of documents. If I search for a keyword because I can't remember the exact song title, I get lists of hits off the web instead of what's in my ...
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Change Spotlight web search default keybindng
The default keybinding to search the web from Spotlight (⌘ CommandSpace) is ⌘ CommandB.
Is it possible to change it? I haven't even found this keybinding documented on official website. (macOS Mojave ...
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How did I accidentally summon this helpful Finder search feature, and what is it called?
In MacOS Catalina (10.15.7) I somehow inadvertently turned on this very nice search feature in a Finder window.
I can select several search criteria in pulldown menus and build a search via GUI rather ...
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Finder not filtering searches when pressing 'Enter'
What I'm trying to achieve: Search through a bunch of files using the search bar in Finder.
How I tried to achieve it: By typing a word into the Finder search bar and pressing 'Enter'
How the system ...
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