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Is it my imagination, or does Leopard's Spotlight suck?

yeroen

yeroen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 8, 2007
944
2
Cambridge, MA
slocate(1) invoked from the terminal does a much better job at finding files than does Spotlight (or mdfind(1)), which seems to miss a lot of stuff.

I seem to remember Spotlight working much better in Tiger.

Any concurrences or angry refutations?
 
the GUI spotlight in leopard is much worse than tiger it is really frustrating because I got really accustomed to using spotlight to find everything but now it just seems to take longer and more work.
 
I wonder who had the bright idea that people really wanted Spotlight to work as a dictionary instead of as an application opener.
 
Yeah spotlight still has some kinks. Sometime it will act as though your hard drive is empty. And the calculator doesn't work anymore.
 
i concurr, it does suck

I would use it all the time in Tiger, now it's a waste of time. The UI is confusing and it searches thousands of web pages that are in my cache that are completely irrelevant to what I'm looking for.

I use quicksilver to search for apps now, and when I do use spotlight I use it only after opening finder and guessing which folder might house what I'm looking for.
 
Yes it sucks bad compared to tiger, but I think for different reasons. They got rid of separated filetypes and made it the same as finder search, which makes it infuriating to find anything now. You have to keep clicking the +'s to narrow your search down so you can actually find something you want, which is just brain dead.

I used the "big window" once or twice, couldnt find jack because it was such a complete mess, havent used it since. Its terrible now. Its only useable via the spotlight menubar.
 
The web page cache finds are one of my biggest annoyances with Leopard Spotlight. You can configure it to ignore Safari History items, but not the cache. This annoyance is a "feature" no doubt, that took its place when Sherlock was decommissioned.
 

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yeroen said:
The web page cache finds are one of my biggest annoyances with Leopard Spotlight. You can configure it to ignore Safari History items, but not the cache. This annoyance is a "feature" no doubt, that took its place when Sherlock was decommissioned.
Click to expand...
Try adding "Users>yourusername>Library>Caches>com.apple.Safari" to the "Privacy" list in Spotlight preferences.
I don't know if this will work but it's worth a try.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
uh...
Click to expand...
You've unfortunately got a quirk. Spotlighting "iPhoto" finds the application as #1 and dictionary def as #2.

Spotlight has its issues: My peeve is that it doesn't actually search everything on my drive. So I can't find application data, or items tucked into the OS's directory.

But on the whole I really like it -- like last night when I realized it would search my contacts to find phone numbers for me! This is truly a significant leap beyond WinXP search (can't speak to Vista).
 
thejadedmonkey said:
it's really quite simple...

If I type "iPhoto", I want the application, not a dictionary definition!:mad:
Click to expand...

haha thats quite funny!

try this untick the Apple dictionary in Dictionary's preferences and quit it. then try...

it doesnt really bother me but as the Dictionary isnt the top result. its quite useful for real definitions though.
 
DaveF said:
You've unfortunately got a quirk. Spotlighting "iPhoto" finds the application as #1 and dictionary def as #2.

Spotlight has its issues: My peeve is that it doesn't actually search everything on my drive. So I can't find application data, or items tucked into the OS's directory.

But on the whole I really like it -- like last night when I realized it would search my contacts to find phone numbers for me! This is truly a significant leap beyond WinXP search (can't speak to Vista).
Click to expand...
Spotlight can't look inside application packages, but you can find system files. Enable the "Include System Files" option (you have to select "Other" from the drop down menu first to get the "System files" to option).
searchingthismac1uy4.jpg
 
Very interesting. I use Spotlight way more often than before.

In general, I found Spotlight in Leopard is better than the old one. It was slow under Tiger. However, Apple did take away some features.
 
Some aspects of Leopard's Spotlight I prefer, others I miss Tiger. Kind of a draw for me, though I would like stronger preference filters.

I does, though, come up with some interesting results. Thinking about a thread from yesterday...
 

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JohnNotBeatle said:
Some aspects of Leopard's Spotlight I prefer, others I miss Tiger. Kind of a draw for me, though I would like stronger preference filters.

I does, though, come up with some interesting results. Thinking about a thread from yesterday...
Click to expand...


Heh heh, following your lead I typed in ass monkey and the first thing to show up was Microsoft Office Setup Assistant.
 
^^ haha. but this its just searching for words which have "butt" in it like "button" which would show up in the iPhone user guide a few times and "crack" would show in your motorcycle helmet doc a few times too.

a better search would be ""butt" crack" as its only searching for "butt" and not other words that contain it.

back to spotlight not searhcing for system files look what i found...

10nre4p.jpg


v7sjgk.jpg


looks like spotlight does search system files but only directories/files that Apple set. there must be a file that can be edited to allow all files to be searched without using the "system files - include" search attribute.
 
DaveF said:
You've unfortunately got a quirk. Spotlighting "iPhoto" finds the application as #1 and dictionary def as #2.

Spotlight has its issues: My peeve is that it doesn't actually search everything on my drive. So I can't find application data, or items tucked into the OS's directory.

But on the whole I really like it -- like last night when I realized it would search my contacts to find phone numbers for me! This is truly a significant leap beyond WinXP search (can't speak to Vista).
Click to expand...
Older OS like Windows XP didn't use on-the-fly indexing, they used the older flat method of updating meta tags and things like that.
 
yeroen said:
Heh heh, following your lead I typed in ass monkey and the first thing to show up was Microsoft Office Setup Assistant.
Click to expand...

Migration Assistant for me with Office Setup Ass-istant at a close second. Ha.

I've never had that many issues with Spotlight. It's a pain to find .plist files though.
 
lancestraz said:
Spotlight can't look inside application packages, but you can find system files. Enable the "Include System Files" option (you have to select "Other" from the drop down menu first to get the "System files" to option).
Click to expand...
That's a good tip. I saw that earlier at MacWorld. I wish it were a bit more obvious, and could be enable by default to be used via the menu-bar Spotlight interface.

So it has some design choices (quirks) that aren't perfect. I also wish that starting a search from some Finder folder would default to only searching that folder and its sub directories. But, this is not killer.

Regardless, I'm generally impressed by Spotlight. As I tell my friends: Windows searches. OS X finds.
 
i find it annoying that it looks in safaris cache, but doesnt include folders like Library. I can never find stuff in Library, but i know where the rest of my files are normally.
 
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