Questions tagged [spotlight]
The search utility included in OS X.
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Prevent Spotlight from showing any visual previews
When I search for something random, sometimes I see previews of images or videos.
I don't want that to happen.
How to set this up?
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Spotlight has issues indexing files, Finder tag not working
When I got a new MacBook Pro M1 running Ventura I restored all Data from TimeMachine to it. After it I found that Spotlight search doesn't run properly. Playing with mdutil fixed it.
Now I still face ...
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Outlook in MacOS search issue
Problem
trying to search mail in Outlook in a Mac computer. It can't find mails, even though the mails are in the inbox
Outlook Version: Office 365
Mac Version: MacBookPro (MacOS Ventrua
13.1)
...
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How to empty trash on external disk on MacOS?
I am using MacOS Ventura 13.1 and I want to do something really complicated and hard: Empty the trash on an external drive!
Normal method: Open Trash, click on empty:
The operation can't be completed ...
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How to prevent Spotlight from indexing mounted NFS/SFTP remote locations?
I am using Mountainduck to mount a remote location over SFTP, which appears locally as an NFS drive. Lately, instead of mounting/unmounting the location every time I had work to do there, I just left ...
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How to set `kMDItemWhereFroms` extended attribute so it shows up in Finder?
I have fetched a file from the internet in Python and would like to save the URL that the file came from. According to this question from 2010, I would expect this using pyxattr to work:
import xattr
...
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How can I remove web search results from spotlight?
I frequently use the command-spacebar command in the OS to search for something, independent of any application. As of installing MacOS Big Sur, I find that when I type in this spotlight context, the ...
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Use Command key only to launch Spotlight?
I've recently switched to MacOS because my employer decided to give me a shiny new MacBook Pro 14 inch (2021), with which in general I'm quite happy. However, one thing keeps bugging me. I'm a ...
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Google Drive files not appearing in Spotlight and Alfred after update
I recently updated to the newest Google Drive app for macOS (49.0.9.0), which replaces Backup & Sync and Drive File Stream (the one for G Suite/Google Workspace customers).
After updating, I can ...
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Microsoft edge not appear in background apps
I want to fix windows spotlight, but, when i was triying to solve the problem checking what aplications were in background i didn´t see microsoft edge. Does anyone knows why that app is not there ?
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spotlight search results are all false and reseted through terminal, but spotlight still continues to absorb all cpu space? (Macos big sur 11.2.3)
I've tried many solutions, but all of them doesn't seem to work, ever since i did a ng generate component my-component an angular command for generating documents. after that command my laptops fans ...
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Catalina 10.15 removing Spotlight icon from menu bar went wrong
I’ve done csrutil disable and went into Terminal and put
cd /System/Library/CoreServices
sudo mv Search.bundle/ Search2.bundle/
I rebooted and it removed the Spotlight icon from the menu bar but I ...
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com.apple.mdworker.shared .... Service exited due to signal: Killed: 9 sent by mds[91]
I’ve noticed a lot of similar system log entries as follow
com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.01000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[622]): Service exited due to signal: Killed: 9 sent ...
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How to change the order of items appearing in Spotlight with macOS Catalina/Big Sur?
In an article on MacWorld from 2015, I saw the following image about changing the order in which items appear in Spotlight:
When I saw this, I wanted to change the order items appear on my Mac. 80% ...
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Mac OS - make spotlight background transparent?
Is there a way to make the dropdown from Spotlight (eg "Suggested Sites") transparent?
More often than not I do simple calculations in Spotlight and I wanna see on the screen what values to ...
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mac os catalina doesn't save spotlight preferences
I use several external drives on my mac. Due to the fact that spotlight indexes each and every drive, and when it drive is a mechanical HDD, it slows to an halt (especially newer SMR drives). I save ...
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spotlight launches new emacs instead of moving focus to a running emacs instance
Suppose I search for chrome in spotlight search, and select the top suggestion - Google Chrome, this causes mac os to move focus to a running instance of Google Chrome, if available. Likewise, when I ...
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How can I open Windows Spotlight links in a browser other than Edge?
I wonder, now that Edge chromium has been released it would be lovely to have links open in there other than in the old Edge. But I can't find out how it works. Is there a special protocol that ...
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Configure Spotlight to open new window by default
I am pretty new to macOS (10.14.5), and I wondered if it was possible to have Spotlight open a new window by default ?
Usually, my workflow is that when I go to a new desktop, I want to open a new ...
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Why macOS Spotlight window arbitrary close after typing a few characters?
I have an issue again with the macOS Spotlight that causes it to suddenly close when I am typing the search criteria, making it impossible to see any search result.
It is a significant issue for all ...
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Can Spotlight indexes be copied to other Macs?
We have recently switched to SMB protocol and now have 12TB of external storage that needs to be reindexed. The amount of network traffic caused such a slowdown that I had to disable indexing on over ...
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Remove "fun" facts from Spotlight lock screen in Windows 10 Home (1803)
UPDATE: I tried all solution proposed in How to disable “link your phone” links on the lock screen? and none of them seem to work on Windows 10 Home (version 1803), so this is probably not a ...
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Windows Spotlight option is missing. How can I enable it?
It's my personal computer running Fall Creators Update. Not connected to any Office or College network. I am not sure why I am seeing "Some settings are hidden or managed by your organization" message....
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Spotlight regular expression shows twitter and movie suggestion
This is a really bizarre thing... but here goes. I was using Spotlight as a temporary copy/paste scratch pad so that I didn't have to have a TextEdit window open. I am working on a regular expression (...
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Why is apple spotlight not finding contents of docx?
Currently, spotlight will only search the title of docx files, not the contents. Is there any way to fix this?
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Default keyboard layout in Spotlight
Long time multi-lingual OS X user. I find it annoying when I invoje Spotlight and start typing an Apps name instead of getting "Photoshop" I get for example "Пчотосчоп" (Phonetic Russian Keyboard). I ...
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Looking for a word between many files
I need to search a word in many Word documents inside many folders that are contained in an external Hard Drive on my Mac. Do you know if it is possible? thx
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OSX Spotlight plugin to search local Git repo history?
Is there a spotlight plugin for OS X that would enable one to find, using spotlight, items in the history of a Git repository?
Let's say that I have a series of text files in my git repo, and in the ...
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Spotlight now treating bash scripts as 'Document' instead of 'unix executable'
I have a directory of bash scripts I use frequently, and I tend to launch these via Alfred
Alfred in turn relies on Spotlight to index scripts, and assign them a meta content type of 'public.unix-...
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osx spotlight open primary display
Is there a way to make spotlight always open in the primary display? I went through the options for spotlight and display options and there doesn't seem to be a place for that in the normal settings.
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How to filter spotlight search results
I use spotlight search to open some applications or look out for definition of english words. But now whenever I type some word to look out for definition, many files are visible as result (which are ...
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Service com.apple.quickook doesn't stop from restarting
Running Mac OS X 10.2.2 in MacBookPro model MacBookPro11,2.
I'm having this issue that I could find using console application:
A daemon named com.apple.quicklook deosn't stop from restarting after 0 ...
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Use the tab key for Mac OS X Spotlight?
As the title goes, how can I use the tab key to cycle through Spotlight suggestions, instead of arrow keys?
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Spotlight built-in calculator does not work
After the latest OS X update to 10.10.2, Spotlight built-in calculator stopped working. I tried to disable/enable it in settings and reboot, but nothing helped.
Am I the only one who is fighting this?...
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Keyboard shortcut for web search on Mac
I've recently made the switch from PC to Mac and am looking for a quick way to make a web search.
On PC, I had Google Desktop installed, so could double-tap 'Ctrl' to bring up a Google search box, ...
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Searching in osx for "anything but.."
I was trying to clean up my music folders and I want to remove everything except MP3 files.
I want to know how to search for everything but MP3s and obviously the subfolders themselves.
What do I ...
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How do I suppress the terminal window when I launch a bash script from Spotlight?
When I run a bash script from Spotlight, a terminal window launches to execute it. The window closes when the script finishes but I'd like to prevent that window from appearing on my desktop at all.
...
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Reduce search sensitivity in Spotlight
OS X' search is almost useless with the hundreds of irrelevant items it produces.
Is there any way to reduce its sensitivity?
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Spotlight NOT indexing Postbox messages/emails
I'm currently having a problem with Spotlight where it does NOT index my email from my IMAP Postbox account. I've checked the Mail & Messages from the search results windows in Spotlight and also ...
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Homebrew, spotlight and upgrading software under /usr/bin/
My OS X comes with a version of git installed in /usr/bin. However, this version is older than the official stable one. I would like to upgrade it.
Can I use Homebrew to upgrade this version? Or ...
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Why does Spotlight omit some files in my search result?
I'm trying to use Spotlight (Mountain Lion) to do a recursive search on a bunch of subfolders.
(It's actually the Firefox disk cache, and I'm pecking around for a few images, so I thought this would ...
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Which tool is most flexible for searching my whole system, locate or mdfind?
Follow-on to Spotlight and the locate command don't search *all* folders:
The steps mentioned by Gordon Davisson were performed; .bashrc was entered in the Spotlight search field, and System and ...
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Run a shell script from Spotlight?
I wrote a very basic script that launches "bc" in quiet mode very a simple but effective calculator. I want to be able to launch it via Spotlight. I can make it a ".command" file, but it never shows ...
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Spotlight: search any word using services without opening Finder
I'm using Mavericks on a Mac. The "services" shortcuts allow me to highlight a word and search for this word in spotlight. This searches for the word in a new Finder window. Is it possible to ...
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How to get OS X Spotlight to search Andrew File System (AFS) volume?
I'd like to have Spotlight index and search a mounted AFS volume (actually, just one folder on this volume).
I'm aware of this question about network volumes:
How to get OS X to index my Network ...
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OS X 10.5 Spotlight Kind different to Finder Kind for particular file (.dylib) despite app (SeaMonkey) removed
in the distant past I installed SeaMonkey. There was a mistake in the apps Info.plist that inappropriately associated a number of file types with the app, in particular .dylib. The bug was recognised ...
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Spotlight not showing the right apps' icons
I have a problem with Spotlight :
When I start typing the name of an app, its icon is usually the c file header's.
For example, for the Activity Monitor :
How can I restore the real icons instead ?
...
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How do I permanently disable the spotlight key?
I'm attempting to disable my spotlight hotkey so that I can make my Alfred hotkey CMD+Space. If I disable "Spotlight menu keyboard shortcut" through system preferences, it seems to stay disabled ...
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Spotlight Privacy List
On my Macbook Pro, I am booting from the internal drive for personal stuff and from an external disk for work. Both run Snow Leopard. When I boot from the external/work drive, I want to exclude my ...
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How to avoid slow startup / OSX won't save spotlight index?
Lately I've been having issues with osx taking a CRAZY long time to start up. Every time it does start, I have this hunch that, considering how hard spotlight is working after startup, that it might ...
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