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10.4: Set up Spotlight to work with launcher utilities
Authored by: mchadwick on Jul 27, '05 09:09:45AM

osxpounder:

The short answer is no, you would not be able to search for anything but applications and then only those applications in standard locations.

I believe you are correct that the intended purpose of spotlight is for file searching and not to be a launcher. However, I am relatively content using Finder if I'm ever missing a document, and otherwise using mail.app's built-in search capabilities. I have no need to have searching at my fingertips. However, since my primary computer is a 12" PowerBook, screen real estate is crucial to me and I need to keep my dock size down to a minimum. Having a launcher like QuickSilver does that for me.

Since Spotlight is now built-in to OS X and the only functionality I need it for is launching applications, it seemed prudent to prune the files it could / would access accordingly to speed it up. The suggestion may not fit most people, I just figured that if we were talking about restricting the files Spotlight looks at to speed it up in one way we might as well at least mention other ways to improve performance - even if it's unorthodox. After all, what else is macosxhints.com if not a place to provide potentially unorthodox solutions to common issues? :-)



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Wow did I misread
Authored by: mchadwick on Jul 27, '05 11:18:30AM

Note to self: no more comments before coffee.

I thought you were asking me if you could continue to search for documents with Spotlight after applying my tip. The answer to that would be no, you cannot.

However, what I now see that you asked me was if you could do a normal Find through Finder (File -> Find). The answer to that is absolutely, yes. In fact, just to be sure, I just now tested it. I was able to find documents in my home directory with a Finder Find, however the same search in Spotlight turned up nothing. (Read: working as I'd hoped)

Sorry for the mis-reading. I've learned my coffee lesson. ;-) Hope this better answers your question!



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