Mavericks - Spotlight preferences

[OldCorpse]

I'm on 10.9.5, up to date on everything. The world's most advanced operating software (heavy sarcasm) has a brain-dead search engine Spotlight, that does not display the path of a file that it finds. Unless you know a secret handshake - in this case you must press the Command key at the same time, to show the path - there is no intuitive way to figure out how to find the path to the stupid file you found... wow, really advanced (heavy sarcasm)! Unfortunately, the secret handshake is still not enough, because at least on my 10.9.5, the path keeps appearing and disappearing every few seconds, so if the path is really long, you have to keep looking at it for a few seconds at a time to memorize the path. Brilliant OS, Apple developers!

My question: is there some way to set Spotlight preferences in such a way that every time I look for a file in Spotlight, it BY DEFAULT displays the path to the file? Because many times it is critical for me to do something to the file, and it helps me not at all to open the file - I must know where it lives and how to get to it (to f.ex. export it etc.). Or is such a thing simply not possible in the most advanced operating software in the world?

 

[OldCorpse]

I guess it's not possible. What dreck OSX is, really. There are so many issues and limitations with OS X, I've started looking at Linux, unfortunately, Linux app ecosystem is not up to snuff. We're living in the dark ages of OSes. I wish windows was a bit better - after 20 years with Apple, I think I'm done, it's just too frustrating and limiting.

 

[DeltaMac]

Open your search results in a smart folder.
That will easily show the path to the file.

But - if you have the file you want as a search result - then you can use the file in place.
Spotlight gives you access to the file directly, with less need for you to know the location...

 

[KALLT]

Finder has Spotlight built in and can show you the path of a file when you enable the path bar. If Spotlight is too braindead for you, then have a look at Alfred or a different file manager (Commander One is a good one). I haven’t come across a good internal search engine on Linux systems that is as good as Spotlight.

 

[OldCorpse]

Thanks. The problem with using Spotlight in finder, is that it is even more braindead, returning literally thousands of files which is really quite useless. At least in regular Spotlight searches, it separates out the folders and documents so you can see what's what and where. Very depressing. It used to be that you could hover over a file you found through Spotlight and it would show the file path, but that was removed (in Lion?), so now there are all sorts of inadequate work-arounds. It just kills me that Apple thinks removing useful functionality is an "improvement". It just makes the whole OS dumber and dumber. I need to export a file - so finding it, and opening it in whatever app does me no good, Apple, can you grok that? It's like the folks who design this don't use their own OS for any real-life work. And there are so many other nits I've just gotten exhausted with, I swear I'd switch over to another OS if only there was one that worked better without its own problems or inadequate apps or whatever. Maybe in another 100 years.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Spotlight didn't replace the Finder's File>Find.