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Questions tagged [spotlight]

Questions about Spotlight, a system-wide desktop search feature of Apple's OS X and iOS operating system.

Spotlight is a selection-based search system, which creates a virtual index of all items and files on the system. It is designed to allow the user to quickly locate a wide variety of items on the computer, including documents, pictures, music, applications, and System Preferences.

For questions regarding general searching outside of Spotlight, use .

1008 questions
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Is it possible to run commands from spotlight?

I run commands in terminal a lot and i'm wondering if it is possible to run the commands from spotlight. For example in spotlight would like to run the command(because i have a lot of network issues): ping google.com And then spotlight to load…
Dean
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11
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3 answers

How can I make spotlight ignore certain file types and directories?

Since spotlight continuously updates the index, sometime the file precedence gets changed around and I might type in "saf" and press return expecting to get Safari, but instead spotlight attempts to open some Java jar file. Question Is there any…
John Berryman
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Spotlight crashes after two letters have been entered

OS X 10.11 on an early 2015 MBP I am trying to search for a document called Starfleet, but after entering the letters "ST", Spotlight crashes. Relevant logs: 02/10/15 12:12:37,642 Spotlight[1566]: XPC connection was invalidated 02/10/15…
razumny
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8
votes
2 answers

Can spotlight do Int > Hex conversion ?

Spotlight is great to do some fast calculation and conversions. But can he also do some geeky conversions like Integers <> Hexadecimals or Integers <> Binary ?
Matthieu Riegler
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Spotlight can't find Google Chrome app

Why does Spotlight want to search Google for Chrome rather than launch the app Chrome? For some reason, searching for Chrome in Spotlight yields numerous suggestions (a Google search for "Chrome", the definition of "chrome", the Wikipedia entry for…
GN.
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6
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1 answer

Spotlight shortcut Cmd+Space stops working in Yosemite

I have to go to the spotlight menu under system preferences and change and re-set the keyboard shortcut to Cmd+Space and then it starts to work again. Has anyone else also experienced this? Anyone know what causes the shortcut to stop working?
Steven Lu
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5
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2 answers

Disable dictionary results in Spotlight?

How can I remove dictionary results from Spotlight results? I've typed "chrome" into Spotlight and looked up chrome in the Dictionary one too many times, and now opening Chrome takes an extra keystroke. I've seen comments about defaults write…
a paid nerd
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5
votes
2 answers

Spotlight, infinite indexing, secondary drives, and NAS

I have several Mac OS X 10.5.8 editing bays, each with at least one additional internal drive, most sized 500GB-1TB. All Macs are also sharing a NAS Isilon cluster 100TB (nfs mount) for shared media etc. Seems like each workstation is running…
Tom
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5
votes
1 answer

Spotlight conversion in UK units

If I type '1 pint' into Spotlight, I am told that this is equivalent to 0.47l. This is true for US units, but I am in the UK, where a pint is 0.57l. Many other imperial units, such as the gallon, are different in the UK, so this isn't a problem…
CaptainProg
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5
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3 answers

Spotlight: Don't Index a Volume

Is it possible to ask Spotlight to not index a volume ?
Rabskatran
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Changing OS X Spotlight priorities for specific applications

I'd like to fiddle with Spotlight's priorities so that when I enter 'photo', my first returned result is Adobe Photoshop, and not Photo Booth. I understand how to change priorities for or disable entire file types, but I'd rather just remove Photo…
Jezen Thomas
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5
votes
1 answer

How to make Spotlight ONLY index certain file types?

I use my mac for development, and create/delete so many (big) files that I ended up turning Spotlight off, since it was taking so much time indexing these files. I think it would be fine if I would only allow Spotlight to index pdf and doc…
Renaud
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4
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3 answers

Change Spotlight's Top Hit?

Say I have two apps that match a search in spotlight (e.g. utility), it seems that Spotlight chooses the first application (sorted alphabetically) as the Top Hit. Is there any way to change this so that a different application appears on top?
Senseful
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4
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3 answers

How can I have Spotlight Comments actually get indexed by Spotlight?

I'm running the latest OS X (10.8.1). Yesterday I discovered the Spotlight Comments feature, so I went through many of my Applications and put useful comments in that field. For example, on Music Manager.app, I put the spotlight comment "google…
Ricket
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4
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1 answer

Spotlight sometimes can't find a file. (that actually exists)

I don't really understand how Spotlight works, I sometimes search for a file that I know it exists, and Spotlight doesn't find it. Then I browse to it and it's there. The volume or folders where it is in are not excluded from Spotlight, I've made…
Petruza
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