Spotlight can’t index the contents of document versions to make them searchable. How you can change that and save having to browse those versions when you need to recover old content.
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You realise that a few hours ago you trashed an important file by accident. How can you search your Time Machine backups without looking through them one at a time?
This new version adds a drag-and-drop window to inspect the metadata of files using mdimport and mdls.
A summary of iCloud Drive syncing of attributes, data, extended attributes, document versions (complex), Spotlight index content, and QuickLook previews.
How to exclude folders and files from these services, with new problems apparent in macOS Tahoe over exclusions from Time Machine backups.
Why can’t some files be seen in thumbnails, or previews, but almost everything else can be seen thanks to QuickLook? And is this connected to Spotlight indexing?
In macOS Mojave, Apple changed the way that Spotlight indexes the contents of plain text files. That introduced a bug that prevents indexing of any of the contents of files starting with certain characters. For many Macs, that bug won’t ever be fixed.
From Ventura (if not earlier) to Tahoe, Spotlight appears unable to index text files that start with two specific letters. Although those are exceedingly rare, this could still catch you out.
How to combine the time of interest with waypoints to reduce 100,000 log entries to just a handful, and discover what you’re looking for in the log.
Notes on how search depends on index structure, effects of language on different types of search term, and the benefits and limitations of search methods.
The Eclectic Light Company 