Mac 101: organize Spotlight results

Welcome to another entry in our series for new Mac users: Mac 101. This installment brings us to the preference panel of Spotlight, OS X's integrated search that makes finding that needle in your hard drive's haystack as easy as pie (clearly, it doesn't protect against mixed metaphors).

You're familiar with the way Spotlight returns results, but did you know that you can change the order in which those results are shown? Read on to find out how (and why you might want to do this).
Firing up System Preferences and clicking on the Spotlight icon (or clicking on 'Spotlight preferences' in the Spotlight menubar results) and you get the following:

Changing the order of the search results is as simple as clicking on one option and dragging it to a different location on the list. Clicking the checkbox next to an item tells Spotlight not to display results of that type, or to display them if the box was unchecked (as you can see I don't show Contacts in my results since I don't know anyone).

The below graphic is a little before and after action of my Spotlight results for your viewing pleasure:

How do you like to order your Spotlight results? Let us know below.

The results on the right are much better for what I'm usually looking for: the name of a cool app that I need to write about or something that I wrote many days ago. That's why I've kept Applications as my first result, but bumped up Documents and PDF Documents to the second and third slots. You should note that the 'Top Hit' and 'Definition' results are always shown in Spotlight's results.

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OS Mac 101

Welcome to another entry in our series for new Mac users: Mac 101. This installment brings us to the preference panel of Spotlight, OS X's...

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Girl Friday

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who hates the new Spotlight. Originally, I thought I had broken it. Now I just ignore it.

July 30 2008 at 7:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Girl Friday's comment

George K.

+1 on the hate for the "show all" window. Every time I see it I think there must a better way, and that there's no way Apple could be using such an ugly and inefficient search results display.

July 31 2008 at 12:44 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Spencer Holman

Better yet, how about an application that give spotlight a facelift or can create views from Tiger?

July 30 2008 at 4:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Spencer Holman's comment

Olligarski

HoudahSpot:
http://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot/

August 05 2008 at 7:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Olligarski

HoudahSpot:
http://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot/

August 05 2008 at 7:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Spencer Holman

Are there any add-ons or plug-in to make spotlight more useful?

July 30 2008 at 4:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

alansky

"The big change in Leopard that really bothers me is when you select "Show All", it dumps all the results into a standard Finder window and you lose those nice groups. I much preferred the way it worked in Tiger." --Rhywun

I totally agree. Spotlight under Leopard is now a friggin' mess. Not only does "Show all" wipe out those orderly groups, but the "Show All" window must be repositioned and resized every time it is invoked. Of all the windows in the Finder, the Spotlight window never remembers how you set it. Not to mention that the only workable view offered in the "Show All" window is list view, which went out of fashion with high-button shoes. Spotlight is really a mess in Leopard. The Tiger version was far, far better.

July 30 2008 at 12:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rhywun

The big change in Leopard that really bothers me is when you select "Show All", it dumps all the results into a standard Finder window and you lose those nice groups. I much preferred the way it worked in Tiger.

July 30 2008 at 10:42 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ipod touch owner

Hi,
is there a way to force spotlight (on 10.5) to open the full list of search results (if you click "Show all") not in a Finder window but in this old Spotlight window 10.4 had?
I found this to be much more organized than the Finder's one. E.g. results have shown up in categories like Images and Documents and you could easily display or hide those categories. Now Finder clutters them all together, presenting them in no specific order... Very disturbing!

July 30 2008 at 10:38 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

spotlightsucks

Hi.

What are you talking about? Spotlight is the worst search ever. Have you ever tried to sort your results by creation date (and not the date a file was last opened; omg)?

Spotlight was pretty ok in 10.4, but it became totally useless with 10.5.

BTW: Opening apps with spotlight: On many systems I have been working at spotlight doesn't find any applications the first time it is used after a reboot. When do I want to start up apps? After a reboot, exactly!

Spotlight? Fail!

July 30 2008 at 10:32 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply