10.4: Use unique Spotlight comments for fast launches

Jun 27, '05 08:42:00AM

Contributed by: Deut3221

Tiger only hintThis is a pretty lame hint, but if you want to dramatically boost the speed of Spotlight for frequently-used searches, assign a short, unique name to the application or document in the Spotlight Comments field.

For example, I assigned the following "Comments":

Now, when I want to launch Word, I type mdoc, and the only item to appear in Spotlight is Word. Hit Command Enter, and the app the launches. Yes, LaunchBar is 10X faster, but this hint improved Spotlight's speed for me to where it is more than satisfactory.

Of course, you can continue assigning unique names (as others have helpfully suggested) to any files and/or apps that you frequently open. The point is short and unique to minimize the number of hits and improve the speed. Hope this is useful to someone...

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050614153132518