Make The Most Of Spotlight

vansmith

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Spotlight can be a very useful tool but it can be a little daunting for a beginner. Simple math equations, file searches, launch applications; it can all be done from Spotlight.

When Spotlight is first set up, it will index your computer, you'll notice a small dot blinking in the middle of the Spotlight icon in your menubar. If you have an older computer, it will probably bog your computer down some. You may notice a "mds" process in Activity Monitor using a ton of CPU resources, that is the Spotlight process. Let it go, it will stop killing your computer once it is finished with the initial ... ... Return to article to continue reading.
 

cwa107


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Nice article, Stretch.

One of the things that might be handy to mention, particularly when using Spotlight as an application launcher, is the keyboard shortcut to invoke it: Command + Spacebar.

I've gotten so used to doing this, I find myself trying to do a Windows key+R by hitting Ctrl+Space at work ;)
 

Slydude

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I've got a stack of similar spotlight tips that could work as a followup. I was originally going to send them to Stretch for his article but I had a major hard drive failure and for some reason the bookmarks were not in my Cloud.

They included the following if I remember correctly:
1. Boolean searches
2. Forcing a reindex of a drive
3. Automator workflow to help with tagging files..

I'm sure there are others but those are the ones I remember
 
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CWA, forgot all about the hotkey as I use Alfred with the same hotkey so Spotlight's is disabled.

Sly, always room for more articles ;)
 
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vansmith

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I added a sentence about invoking Spotlight. I get the feeling that Stretch is like me - I use Alfred so I didn't even think about the keyboard shortcut when reading it over, haha.
 

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