10.4: Two ways to bypass Spotlight 'find-as-you-type'

Sep 06, '05 09:04:00AM

Contributed by: stevebr

Tiger only hintSpotlight has one "feature" that many people find quite annoying: as you start typing, Spotlight immediately starts matching results. If you have a large hard drive, and there are lots of matches, this can get quite annoying at times.

If you would prefer to complete your query before Spotlight starts going through your stuff (and perhaps choking on the way, as can sometimes happen), either of these third-party applications can help:

  1. Use Laserlight

    This is an AppleScript-based application that presents a display dialog into which you type your query before sending it to Spotlight as completed text. One nice touch: the author has also included an option to search as name or keyword only. Also, the program is GPL'd, so poke around inside it and tweak it as you need. The script inside has some very clever bits that might prove useful for other customizations of Spotlight functionality.

  2. Use Quicksilver as a Spotlight front-end.

    A Quicksilver text string (or any object, for that matter) can be "piped" to Spotlight, if the Spotlight plug-in is enabled. I don't believe it is by default. If yours isn't, try this:

    1. Open up Quicksilver's Preferences
    2. On the Plug-ins panel, check to see that the Spotlight module is available and enabled. If not, try the next step. Otherwise skip ahead.
    3. On the Applications panel, check "Enable advanced features" (you may need to change the level of this item to "Beta," and a restart of Quicksilver may be required as well).
    4. Still in Preferences, the Actions panel will now have two Spotlight actions listed in "All actions:" Search in Spotlight Window and Run Search with Spotlight. You may want to drag these up a few notches in the list, so they appear with a higher priority when using Quicksilver.

    Here are a couple of tips for doing this with Quicksilver:

[robg adds: I tested Laserlight, and it works as described. If attached to a keyboard shortcut via any of the various apps available to do so, this could be quite handy if you hate the "find as you type" behavior of Spotlight.]

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