Filed under: Leopard
Spotlight in 10.5 skips over user Library files
Wondering why your Adium chat logs aren't showing up in Spotlight search now that you're running Leopard? Vincent Noel was wondering, and he tracked down the reason: files in your user ~/Library folder are now not reported by Spotlight, unless you enable "Include" to show system files (easiest way: invoke Spotlight with Command-Option-Space to perform a "universal search"). This search hiccup also affects Journler, and presumably any other third-party app which stores files in ~/Library.It seems that files inside your Library folder are considered off-limits for basic Spotlight results... which is kinda funny, because that's where Mail.app keeps your messages, and those are sure searchable. OK, so files Apple applications store there are fine -- everything else is off limits. Hmm.
Thanks, Vincent.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rick Stratton said 12:09PM on 11-13-2007
I noticed last night, that when Time Machine mounted my network disk to perform a backup (yes, I know its a hack, but its working fine for me, and its really my 2ndary backup tool, so not as critical), once the sparce disk image was mounted, Spotlight indexed it. I am not sure if this is a good thing, or a bad thing, and I almost added the volume to my spotlight exclude, but then decided not to. Does anybody have any info on whether the sparse image used by Time Machine needs to be Spotlight indexed to work properly or not? Just curious. For now, I am leaving it alone :)
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Martin said 12:21PM on 11-13-2007
What kind of watch does that guy have? I think I like it. What was the announcement about? ;-)
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Mat Lu said 12:38PM on 11-13-2007
So is there any way to get the System Files included in a default Spotlight search? Or do you have to do it through the Finder?
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Josh said 12:57PM on 11-13-2007
they don't want the average user to be able to find things like library preferences because they'll screw things up. It's a Mac, it's designed for stupid people and loved by dumb and smart alike.
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Tyrannous said 1:04PM on 11-13-2007
Thats where i hide my pron!
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joseph said 1:06PM on 11-13-2007
The point is developers are supposed to be writing their apps to be spotlight friendly, meaning plugins into spotlight to tell it where to search (even inside ~/Library) for files
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Adrian vG said 1:10PM on 11-13-2007
C'mon quit complaining! Stacks, Spotlight, the Dock, Menubar, Networking, yada yada. Go back to Tiger, I've read somewhere that it will get an update soon.
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Simon Arch said 1:23PM on 11-13-2007
"C'mon quit complaining!"
Take your own advice. If you don't like the content here, I'm sure you can find plenty of other Mac blogs to look at. Or better yet: start your own.
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paul said 1:38PM on 11-13-2007
Thanks for this. I've been trying to figure out how to fix this since I installed Leopard.
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mark said 1:53PM on 11-13-2007
thanks for confirming this. this issue has been driving me nuts. i even posted about it in the apple discussions -- receiving no helpful replies (and one very *un*helpful one from someone who criticized me for wanting spotlight to find these types of files).
if anyone can find a permanent fix for this -- a terminal command or whatever -- please, please post it.
it seems apple keeps "dumbing down" the OS to cater to the masses. i'm glad more people are buying macs, of course, but all of these new "features" (like the warnings when you attempt to open a downloaded app) are getting ridiculous. the problem isn't so much the added features -- but that there's no way to *change* the default behavior.
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Scott Russell said 3:16PM on 11-13-2007
It appears that Mail searches differently than both Spotlight and Finder. Could the author comment on the differences?
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Kirk McElhearn said 2:04PM on 11-13-2007
This is, of course, incorrect. Many apps store their files in ~/Library/Application Support (where they are supposed to) and Spotlight can index them. (Just two examples on my Mac: Delicious Library and Yojimbo.) I can understand Apple not wanting the rest of that folder searched. If developers put their files in the App Support folder where they are supposed to, then there wouldn't be a problem.
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Michael Long said 5:47PM on 11-13-2007
If the files you want to find in Adium or some other program aren't searchable, then the best thing to do is to let the program's developers know about it. We're all better served when they follow the guidelines and put things where they're supposed to be (are you listening, Microsoft?), and when they support the APIs that let the system do its job.
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Tyrone Rugen said 7:09PM on 11-13-2007
Since I have energy enough to do for free what I assume AppZapper does—Spotlight an app, then drag to the trash anything with its name (usually app, preference file, and app support folder)—I understand that in 10.5 it's up to the app to tell Spotlight to index it in ~/Library? So my uninstall method will still work after I upgrade to 10.5, if the app was written according to spec? (And if my uninstall method isn't proper, well, it's hasn't bit me yet.)
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Trent Pancake said 9:31PM on 11-13-2007
I still can't get Leopard to index my /users/shared directory. It ignores all my photos and music...
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massx said 11:35PM on 11-13-2007
Check here guys:
Money Quote:
To tweak your search further, click the + button at the right end of the Location Bar. This reveals a Criteria Bar. Here you can choose a metadata type in the leftmost pop-up menu. By default, there are just six sorts of metadata listed here: ...
There is also a seventh item in the leftmost pop-up menu of a Criteria Bar: Other. . . When you choose Other, you get a dialog listing all the kinds of metadata the Spotlight index knows about... I recommend that you immediately check two items that I think you'll be using quite a lot:
System files. When set to Include, files are sought even in special locations such as /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Preferences. For example, if you search on "com.apple" you won't find much, but if you include system files, you'll find hundreds of preference files.
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massx said 11:37PM on 11-13-2007
Sorry, another try at the link:
http://db.tidbits.com/article/9283
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conor said 6:28AM on 11-14-2007
DVDpedia files for Spotlight are in ~/Library/Caches/Metadata and they get indexed with Spotlight (so there are exceptions) along with the Safari bookmarks and other Apple Spotlight files in the same folder; it's what lets the Quick Look also work so nicely with Spotlight.
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