Find Files Faster Using Spotlight Keyword Searches

Using Spotlight Keeping song of all of the files in your Mac can be a hard assignment; remembering file names or record contents is even extra tough.

And if you haven’t accessed the file it is in recently, you can no longer don’t forget wherein you saved a specific piece of treasured records.

Luckily, Apple presents Spotlight, a quite speedy seek device for the Mac. Spotlight can seek on record names, in addition to the contents of files. It also can search on keywords or metadata related to a file. How do you create key phrases for files? I’m happy you asked.

Using Spotlight Keywords and Metadata

Using Spotlight Many documents to your Mac already contain quite a bit of metadata.

For example, that image you downloaded from your digicam likely includes a outstanding deal of metadata approximately the photograph, along with publicity,

lens used, whether or not a flash become used, photo length, and coloration area.

If you would really like to look a photograph’s metadata speedy, strive the subsequent.

This will paintings excellent with a photograph downloaded out of your camera or a photograph that came from a pal’s camera.

Pictures you locate on the internet may not comprise plenty within the manner of metadata, apart from photo length and coloration area.

  1. Open a Finder window, and navigate to one of your favorite photos.
  2. Right-click the image file, and select Get Info from the pop-up menu.
  3. In the Get Info window that opens, expand the More Info section.
  4. The EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) information (metadata) will be displayed.

Using Spotlight We went to the effort to expose you the metadata that may be contained in a few document sorts is to reveal you which of them record statistics Spotlight can look for.

For instance, if you wish to discover all your photos fascinated about an F stop of 5.6, you could use a Spotlight search of:

fstop:5.6

Using Spotlight We’ll delve further into Spotlight metadata in a while, however first, a bit about keywords.

The metadata contained within a report isn’t the only search keywords you could use. You can create your key phrases for any report in your Mac that you have study/write permission to access. Essentially, that means you could assign custom keywords to all your user files.

Using Spotlight How to Add Keyword to Files

Using Spotlight Some document sorts already have key phrases associated with them, as we confirmed above,

with an photograph’s EXIF information.

But most of the record files you use on a daily foundation likely don’t have any associated searchable keywords that Spotlight can use.

But it doesn’t need to stay that way;

you may add keywords your self that will help you discover a document in a while when you’ve long because forgotten generally searched keywords, which include report identify or date.

An remarkable example of the type of key-word you can upload to a record is a venture call,

so you can quickly locate all the documents needed for a mission you’re working on.

To add key phrases to a report, observe this clean technique.

  1. Use the Finder to locate the file to which you want to add keywords.
  2. Right-click the file, and select Get Info from the pop-up menu.
  3. In the Get Info window that opens, there’s a section labeled Comments.
  4. In OS X Mountain Lion and earlier, the Comments section is right near the top of the Get Info window and is labeled Spotlight Comments.
  5. In OS X Mavericks and later, the Comments section is around the middle of the Get Info window, and will likely need to be expanded by clicking on the disclosure triangle next to the word Comments.
  6. In the Comments or Spotlight Comments section, add your keywords, using commas to separate them.
  7. Close the Get Info window.

Using Spotlight How to Use Spotlight to Search for Comments

Using Spotlight you enter into the Comments segment are not at once searchable by means of Spotlight; as an alternative, you need to precede them with the keyword ‘comment.’ For example:

comment:project dark castle

This could reason Spotlight to search for any report that has a remark with the name ‘assignment dark citadel.

‘ Note that a colon follows the phrase ‘comment’ and that there is no area between the colon and the key-word for which you want to search.