How useful is the Spotlight search?
Hey,
I'm planning to move to the Mac soon and I was wondering if you could tell me how useful the Spotlight search is.
Does it really work? Don't you ever have to do an actual, slow, system-wide search?
I'm asking that because I've tried Google Desktop and I don't like the way it works (it often uses too much of my CPU and misses some file). I've also heard that Vista's instant search is kinda fake (it can't find many of the files).
If it's currently not good enough - Is it better in Leopard? (I've heard they improved it there...)
Thanks
I'm planning to move to the Mac soon and I was wondering if you could tell me how useful the Spotlight search is.
Does it really work? Don't you ever have to do an actual, slow, system-wide search?
I'm asking that because I've tried Google Desktop and I don't like the way it works (it often uses too much of my CPU and misses some file). I've also heard that Vista's instant search is kinda fake (it can't find many of the files).
If it's currently not good enough - Is it better in Leopard? (I've heard they improved it there...)
Thanks
Comments
For real search power you use Quicksilver.
In Leopard Spotlight will get even more hardass as it will start supporting boolean queries from the GUI. There haven't been very many times I'd have wanted to use that functionality, though.
Quicksilver doesn't do the same thing. The way it comes as default, you can get to your apps through it but little else. On the other hand, QS is not limited to launching things, it manipulates things. Installing a bunch of QS plugins will have you doing things like e-mailing documents, making calculations, archiving a bunch of files across the system directly from QS without touching another app.
I use both. They're awesome. That's all.
The slowness of Spotlight will depend on the speed of your machine and the number of places that Spotlight needs to search. On a new Mac with a sizeable amount of RAM (at least 1 GB), Spotlight searches should be very fast. If you use the special Spotlight pane instead of the Finder search function, it works even faster. You can also limit where Spotlight searches and that, too, can speed it up.
I use a slower G4 Mini with only 512 MB RAM with 3 hard drives and, except for searching directly in the Finder with Spotlight, searching is instantaneous. A PC friend of mine saw Spotlight in action and he wanted to know where he could get it for his PC, so I think you'll probably be impressed with it.
Claire
Spotlight is an actual system-wide search and will find anything it has plugins for..
What do you mean?
It should be able to find ANY file no matter if there's a plugin for it or not. However, if there is a plugin for a certain kind of file, it may enable more advanced search (e.g. Word plugin would enable searching within a file, iPhoto plugin would enable searching for a photo's keywords etc.).
Is this correct?
I'm always BLOWN AWAY at how ridiculously SLOW Windows searching is. It's pathetic. Probably takes 20 times longer. Seriously. Absolutely pathetic. I use Spotlight to launch everything, as it's faster than hunting the apps down or cramming my Dock with 20 things.
Spotlight IS the search. Yes, it's that fast.
Is this true? There's no other search method in OS X but Spotlight? If it's not on Spotlight it's nowhere?
I use spotlight all the time. In fact I do not use the finder anymore (or only in very specific cases). Everything I need can be found with Spotlight, and it is very fast on my iMac C2D.
I couldn't use a mac without spotlight, definitively.
I have already used "spotlight like" tools on windows (Google Desktop Search, and the microsoft solution... I do not remember its name, "Live Search" maybe). They cannot compete with the real spotlight. Spotlight is far far better and quicker.
What do you mean?...
Spotlight will search every filename on the computer (unless you have restricted it)... but it can't see INSIDE every file ... it see's inside files from apple apps just fine, as well as pdf, and doc files ... but if there's a proprietary file type, and no "plug-in" to allow spotlight to see inside it, then Spotlight will only search the file-name... not the contents.
That said, Spotlight works great.
That's the only drawback that I see.
And anyway - is there any other way to search the system folder?
I'm pretty sure you can also search in the System folder through Terminal, using the locate command. But you have to know how to use the Terminal first.
Also keep in mind that "Smart Folders" (folders that contain no actual data but contain search results) are wholly powered by Spotlight. So even if you never search for an item you can create handly Smart Folders that what your system for files containing certain attributes.
In fact no only am I swilling the Spotlight Kool Aid but I'm actually going to move to a flat file system. No more seperating PDF from other documents. Everything is going in one Documents folder and I'll have Smart Folders that handle the segmentation
ie: a PDF Smart Folder that watches for all filetypes ending in .pdf.
You can then see the power of Spotlight and Smart Folders. No more tedium of navigating a folder structure to find or save a particular document in a unique file format.
Spotlight IS the search. Yes, it's that fast.
I'm always BLOWN AWAY at how ridiculously SLOW Windows searching is. It's pathetic. Probably takes 20 times longer. Seriously. Absolutely pathetic. I use Spotlight to launch everything, as it's faster than hunting the apps down or cramming my Dock with 20 things.
Amen. I go get coffee when I search my Windows machine at work.
What's in the system folder?
And anyway - is there any other way to search the system folder?
The System/Library and /Library folders contain the guts of the system - BSD Unix core, Carbon and Cocoa frameworks etc.
Sometimes you want to find which files contain the settings for a particular system item. Since Spotlight doesn't index the System folder, it can't be used for that. You can use the Unix "find" command, but it does not do content search.
The /System folder on MacOS X is read-only by users, including the Admin, unless you take extra steps to poke at it. This is by design. All customizations, settings, etc, reside *outside* /System, meaning that there's almost never a reason to poke about in there. Anything you want to tweak, you can do without diving into /System. /System is, essentially, Apple's place to play, and only experts in MacOS X (and Unix, by extension, at this level) should go mucking about in there.
So there's little reason for the average user to ever be searching within /System with Spotlight. Expert users may have need to, but if you're just coming over, that's going to be a while.
Isn't 10.5 doing Boolean stuffs in spotlight?
The metadata potential of spotlight is more interesting - and potentially very powerful - if you have any need for that kind of organisational power.