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Spotlight on search: How to diagnose and fix problems

Indexing and search diagrammed, leading to the diagnosis of problems with Spotlight, and their resolution.

February 19, 2021 Macs, Technology

Diagnosing a Spotlight bug in Big Sur: failure to index RTF content

Why can’t my Macs find text in Rich Text files? This explains how to diagnose the cause – which here is a bug in Big Sur’s Spotlight importer for RTF.

February 12, 2021 Macs, Technology

Spotlight on search: Better and different, 3rd party apps

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EasyFind, Find Any File and HoudahSpot compared, and tested against a wide range of search targets. The results are surprising.

February 4, 2021 Macs, Technology

Spotlight on search: Search and you might be lucky

Details the contents of files which are built into Spotlight’s index, its reliance on keys, how apps can perform Spotlight searches, and the three bundled tools for users.

January 29, 2021 Macs, Technology

Spotlight on search: How Spotlight works

Almost 16 years old, many think it has grown steadily worse. It has faced new challenges such as iCloud, privacy, and APFS backups. Here’s how it works, and how to get the most from it.

January 28, 2021 Macs, Technology

Under The Spotlight: local search

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Yosemite’s extended search reaches out to Bing, Maps, and more. But how can you get the best out of its local search facility?

May 6, 2015 Macs, Technology
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