Filed under: Software
Screen Sieve
Yellow Lemon Software recently introduced Screen Sieve, a new screen-searching utility for Mac OS X. Screen Sieve is one of those apps you don't really "get" until you start using it. It allows you to perform a search within any window in any application that supports Accessibility in Mac OS X - and most apps do. When invoked (the default hotkey is Command-Option-Return [??Return] ), you start typing what you are looking for and Screen Sieve will fade your display and highlight all instances of what you're typing. Not just text, either. It'll look at images, buttons and other objects, too. It's kind of like what happens when you type into the little search box up top while you're in System Preferences - except it works everywhere else and it's customizable. Check out the short demo movie if you're having trouble visualizing it.
You'll need Mac OS X 10.4.x to use it and you'll also need to check the box that says "Enable Access for Assistive Devices" in the Universal Access system preference pane. As an added bonus it's Universal Binary and donationware, which is similar to free, depending on what kind of mood you're in.
Warning - if you use SoHo Notes, the default shortcut for Show QuickNote is ??Return as well so you'll need to change the hotkeys in one (or both) of these apps so they don't conflict.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
SBREZ said 10:34PM on 12-20-2006
A cool application but one major draw back is you can only find what is present on the screen at the time the search is invoked. What I mean by this is that any other words further down in your document or window which you would normally scroll down to will not be found. Worse yet if you try to scroll up or down the search is canceled and so you have to keep repeating this process in large documents or web pages. Doesn't seem to work in Firefox 2.0. I hope they add/fix this draw back soon.
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Chris said 10:46PM on 12-20-2006
So, neat idea... but it doesn't work inside Firefox, which makes it virtually useless to me, as most of my find commands happen in my browser. :( I wanted it to work so badly!
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Chris said 11:13PM on 12-20-2006
Also, it doesn't work with MS Word.. go figure. Uninstalling... sigh.
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JoJo Mascalero said 12:22AM on 12-21-2006
fail to see the point of this? great idea, but very limited.
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dalas v said 12:39AM on 12-21-2006
Wow, I never even knew about that System Prefs thing. I always knew which Pref I wanted to edit, so I never typed anything into that box. It's amazing how I've been using OSX since it came out and yet it is still showing me how smart it is all the time.
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slingshot said 2:45AM on 12-21-2006
I agree with Srik
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Rich said 4:00AM on 12-21-2006
Maybe you're right, but I still don't get why I need it. Each browser and MS Word also can do it itself.
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gentax said 6:01AM on 12-21-2006
Rich,
it's because if it works correcly, you can use the same way of finding word in all app...
;)
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Mitch said 7:20AM on 12-21-2006
Thanks for the heads up - i'm trying it - i often find that i have trouble seeing things at times and this may help me find things - i understand the limitations about not scrolling etc.
Would be a nice feature for the OS to do itself - apple listening?
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sislewax said 7:27AM on 12-21-2006
you can just use command+F to search
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Gerald Buckley said 8:28AM on 12-21-2006
Will be rendered obsolete by Leopard anyway...
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Hessi said 9:03AM on 12-21-2006
nice, but I can't get it to work with images, as advertised. What does it look for, for example in Safari: The name of the image, the name of the page the image links to? Nothing seems to work.
Furthermore, it doesn't work with applications on the second screen. :-(
And I'm still looking for a reason to use it - besides looking cool.
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niclet said 11:20AM on 12-21-2006
Great but even in the foremost window, you can't scroll to see the rest of the search query. Static!
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Liquidmark said 12:41PM on 12-21-2006
The name of the thing is SCREEN SIEVE!
That implies that it searches the screen.
Dang, it's donationware, give the guys a break for trying.
Personally, In Safari, command+f would work MUCH better if it picked out all occurances of the word I type in, and used a BRIGHT color to highlight instead of a light grey, which is hard to see.
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flek said 1:06PM on 12-21-2006
This is a great program. To all of you: for rest use CMD+F!!!
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Lars said 2:35PM on 12-21-2006
Say #2... Erm... If you use Firefox, it always had an option to search for text anywhere on a page. Go to preferences, advances > accessibility and tick the box "Begin finding when you start typing".
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darynar said 11:49PM on 12-29-2006
what is that background you are using???
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