The macosxhints Rating:
[Score: 9 out of 10]
- Developer: Houdah Software/ Product page
- Price: €15 (free demo available)
Enter HoudahSpot. Among its many other skills, HoudahSpot will let you customize your search results by adding not just Finder columns, but any column that Spotlight can search on.
For example, here's a search I ran to find images that are over 20MB in size. Note that in the results, I can not only see and sort on image size, but I've also added a number of Spotlight's photography-related keys (click for a full-size version): I wrote about HoudahSpot in detail back in February for Macworld's Mac Gems columns; since then, the program's gotten even better. A new Blitz Search feature puts a Spotlight-like icon in the menu bar, and provides keyboard shortcuts (customizable) to activate that menu or the main HoudahSpot window. This makes using HoudahSpot as convenient as Spotlight. There are tons of additional features, including the ability to create templates, using Quick Look on search results, and a full contextual menu for handling files in the results list (see above screenshot).
The only major annoyance I've found with HoudahSpot is that it's set to start searching immediately, just like Spotlight -- as soon as you start building your query, it starts searching. Once it starts searching, it becomes hard to continue building the query, as your machine is busy searching. Luckily, this live search can be disabled via HoudahSpot's preferences (another feature I wish Spotlight had).
If you miss the ability to customize your search results, or just want to do more with Spotlight, HoudahSpot is well worth the cost. (Use the free demo to decide if its feature set is worth it for your needs.)


