Filed under: Mac 101
Mac 101: Spotlight, your application-launching pal
More Mac 101, our series of tips and tricks for new and returning Mac users. Love it or hate it, Spotlight's ubiquitous search has changed the Mac OS X experience; quick and (mostly) reliable full-text indexing is now part of the landscape. It's not just for finding files, however; did you know that Spotlight makes a handy application launcher too?You can launch most any application by hitting the Spotlight hotkey (?-Space by default), then typing the first few letters of the application's name. Chances are it will be the "top hit" for your search, so go ahead and hit Return or Enter to launch it immediately. This approach doesn't have the power-user moxie of third-party launchers like QuickSilver, Butler or LaunchBar, but it's helpful for applications that don't live in your Dock when you want to reach them quickly.
If you've got ideas, suggestions or questions on the Mac 101 front, just let us know below.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Roberto said 4:55PM on 8-12-2008
I've always wanted to know how to connect my already-once-paired bluetooth stereo headphones to my MacBook. I am tired of running the BT Assistant repeatedly when I intend to enjoy some wireless Pandora.
P.S. I am using the BSH01 BT earphones. They work perfectly every time with my (gasp!) non-iPhone.
Reply
nka said 5:03PM on 8-12-2008
You know, this doesn't really qualify as a tip, and I would venture to say that anyone reading tuaw already knows this.
Reply
michael said 5:07PM on 8-12-2008
maybe isn't a valid tip, but it sure seems the same from a "pay-per-article" standpoint.
Dave said 5:51PM on 8-12-2008
tip (noun): a small but useful piece of practical advice.
This article seems to qualify. And not everyone might know about using Spotlight in this fashion.
Ross said 10:27PM on 8-12-2008
i didn't know about the short-cut (cmd-space) to open spolight
Simon Arch said 12:38PM on 8-13-2008
You can change the keys in System Preferences in the Spotlight pane. I always change it to command-F12 and command-option-F12 because I prefer to have command-space reserved for its traditional use: to switch the keyboard input language.
And Spotlight in Leopard is all the launcher I need. I barely use the dock anymore. I keep a few frequently-used apps in there, but even then I rarely launch them that way. Beats Quicksilver by a mile for me because a) it's part of the system and b) braindead simple. Plus? It's stable. No random crashes.
jonathan ober said 5:05PM on 8-12-2008
because of spotlight i have changed how i name things when doing projects. i am a website designer/developer and used to have folders with things like website1.psd file. Now I call things by the client name like Apple-website1.psd or Apple-logo1.psd. Now in spotlight I just type their name and boom i get my file. i use it once in a while for opening apps, but all the important ones are in the dock for me.
Reply
Gabe said 5:44PM on 8-12-2008
I've tried this a few times, but I find Spotlight to be too slow on anything but a current-gen machine. My solution is to drag the Applications folder to the dock, then right click and start typing. It'll hang for a second the first time while it creates the list, but afterwards it's a super-fast app launcher.
Reply
Steve Simitzis said 6:41PM on 8-12-2008
heh. I just tried it, and Spotlight brought up about eight different files with "safari" in the name as the top hit, including various stylesheets, a file called MobileSafariSettings.bundle, and even a few songs.
It eventually settled on a folder called "safari", which turned out to be a TinyMCE plug-in for Safari compatibility.
Reply
DrWho said 8:18AM on 8-13-2008
You should go to system preferences/spotlight and on the search results tab move Applications to the top of the list
Simon Arch said 12:53PM on 8-13-2008
I just tried it myself. The application comes up instantly.
John said 3:02PM on 8-13-2008
I'm a fairly recent convert to a Mac (I bought my first Macbook with Tiger), so I've always had Spotlight. Because of the ability to launch apps, I have never used QuickSilver.
I don't want to claim that QS is obsolete (I've seen that it's incredibly powerful), but I think that Spotlight for Mac-noobs fills that need.
Reply
jmello said 4:09AM on 8-14-2008
I've been using Namely for about two years now, mapped to show when I press Shift-Enter. I don't remember exactly how, but I also made it not show up in the dock, just run silently in the background.
http://amarsagoo.info/namely/
Reply