Two apps using Core Spotlight, compared with respect to indexing of new entries, and searching. Quick tests to tell whether an app uses Core Spotlight, and what that brings.
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When listing files by name, should 20test.text come before or after 200test.text? Which order is the more ‘natural’? How this quickly becomes complex.
The phrase repeated throughout WWDC was ‘semantic search’. How does fit in with Spotlight, and how could it benefit those who aren’t so enthused by advanced AI?
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.
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.
The Eclectic Light Company 