10.5: Use text snippets to quickly build accurate searches
Dec 20, '07 07:30:03AM • Contributed by: jehrler
Dec 20, '07 07:30:03AM • Contributed by: jehrler
Spotlight in Leopard is much, much better. So good, in fact, that I am using it to replace QuickSilver. However, one downside to Spotlight is that it doesn't learn as well as QS so certain Applications/Preferences/Files require a lot of typing. To get around this, I am taking advantage of the new Spotlight commands plus TextExpander to create my own favorites list.
First, I realized that if I made the Spotlight search take advantage of the Spotlight Commands listed by David Pogue in this hint, I could create a search that will always work to give me what I want as the top hit. Then, I could link that to a snippet in TextExpander, and I will have created a preferred search that is short and sweet.
Thus, I linked the text kind:preferences keyboard to a TextExpander snippet of kb so that when I type kb in Spotlight, it expands to kind:preferences keyboard, and the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences pane I am looking for is now top of the list.
In addition, you can use Spotlight Commands plus TextExpander to create and combine a panoply of search criterion to direct you to favorite files, applications, types of documents, date ranges, etc. So a snippet that expands to kind:images can be followed by one that expands to date:"this week" to show you all the images from this week.
In essence, these become temporary Smart Folders created as needed, and discarded just as easily.
[robg adds: Obviously, you could use TypeIt4Me or any of the other text snippet insertion apps to do this trick. (And if you're not using such an app, I highly recommend it to anyone who spends the majority of their day at their machine typing -- they are indeed great timesavers.]
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