Usefull Spotlight Tip

icfireballicfireball
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
The "Spotlight Comments" section in a files "Get Info" (available via get info - File > Get Info; Command-I; right click, "Get Info...") is very under used, but when used right, very powerfull.



Instead of typing things very specific to your document in that, type things that would classify the document easily.



So if you have a project about say, skyscrapers, you could type "*skyscrapers" in the Spotlight Comments box for each file you have relating to that project. That way, if you want easy acess to these files, you probably only have to type *sky and all of your files relating to that project will pop up imediatly.



You can also Apple the concept to very important or highly used documents that you might want quick access to with such a keyword. For example, if you have a excel document for finances, you could type "*money", or even simply "$".

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    livatlantislivatlantis Posts: 80member
    Thanks for the tip



    I'm constantly surprised at how Spotlight can manage to find the files I want and have it come up in the top ten. In fact, I think I'm getting used to being surprised!



    Anyway, this is take things every further.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    Another useful place to use this is in iTunes. Its very easy to build and maintain playlists with the comments field directly in iTunes and I have used it since iTunes got smart playlists.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    macanoid(tm)macanoid(tm) Posts: 344member
    I suggest you have a look at this, Batch Apply Spotlight Keywords



    Does what you suggest, but easier
  • Reply 4 of 8
    michael_moriartymichael_moriarty Posts: 127member
    I use Spotlight comments all the time. I tag any PDFs or other documents I download from the Internet with the text "Status: Not Read". Then I move them to the appropriate folders on my system. I also created a smart folder that will search for all files with that Spotlight Comment.



    Very useful way for me to see which documents on my system haven't been read yet.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    livatlantislivatlantis Posts: 80member
    That's an excellent idea.



    I have a bunch of PDFs as which I need to remind myself to read as well.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    michael_moriartymichael_moriarty Posts: 127member
    Yeah, it's pretty useful. I have created an automator workflow to do this automatically for me and then attached it as a folder action.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    daffy_duckdaffy_duck Posts: 248member
    The problem is that as far as I know, spotlight comments are not embedded in the file. Apple does not provide any method to insert IPTC keywords into files yet spotlight will index metadata in files that already have it.



    In other words, if you copy an image with spotlight comments to a windows computer, the keywords are not there. Similarly, if you add keywords in iPhoto, they are not indexed, nor do they travel with the photo. I refuse to spend a lot of time adding keywords to data only to lose it all down the road. I have searched very hard for a program that allows embedded IPTC metadata and only managed to find one command line utility that costs $30.



    (http://www.hugsan.com/EXIFutils/)



    Picasa in Windows embeds keywords into the file. Vista also will do embedded IPTC data. In fact, there are tons of ways to embed metadata in Windows but none that an Intel Mac user like myself can use in OS X 10.4.5. I hope Apple gets this right in Leopard.



    By the way, Picasa eat's iPhoto's lunch. Jobs claims that iPhoto can handle 100k photos...Picasa actually can handle 100k photos. I wish Apple could purchase Picasa from Google.





    Quote:

    Originally posted by icfireball

    The "Spotlight Comments" section in a files "Get Info" (available via get info - File > Get Info; Command-I; right click, "Get Info...") is very under used, but when used right, very powerfull.



    Instead of typing things very specific to your document in that, type things that would classify the document easily.



    So if you have a project about say, skyscrapers, you could type "*skyscrapers" in the Spotlight Comments box for each file you have relating to that project. That way, if you want easy acess to these files, you probably only have to type *sky and all of your files relating to that project will pop up imediatly.



    You can also Apple the concept to very important or highly used documents that you might want quick access to with such a keyword. For example, if you have a excel document for finances, you could type "*money", or even simply "$".



  • Reply 8 of 8
    michael_moriartymichael_moriarty Posts: 127member
    I agree. That is the one thing that bothers me with OS X and Spotlight. Not all the metadata is always there in the file.



    I can understand why Apple uses an index of all your files with Spotlight because it makes searching faster. But it can be backwards at time.



    The metadata you add at times (Spotlight comments, keywords, etc.) only get written to the Spotlight database and not embedded in the file like it should be.



    It should work like this: a file has metadata embedded in it, Spotlight sees the metadata and indexes it and includes it in its database. You then have two copies of your metadata on your system: in the original file and in the Spotlight database. This way if you ever decide to move your file to another computer, you don't lose the metadata.



    Oh well.
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