Using the Spotlight window and Finder’s Find window to locate local files that match your search criteria. Word boundaries and their effect on search results.
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Applying a sequence of criteria to narrow search until you find your target. How incremental search can help. The role of predicates, and how to search the log.
How the name of one of the two ancient Greek Graces confuses Spotlight’s search box, and which characters can separate words.
Open multiple windows in LogUI, set them up to obtain the same log extract, then apply different searches to each. A powerful way to read long and complex log extracts.
Search your log extract instantly to show only entries containing the chosen text in their message, process name, sender name, or subsystem.
Finder tags should sync in iCloud Drive, and should be found when you use Spotlight search for their tag labels. Here’s what to check when there are problems.
How Spotlight works, Core and global Spotlight, importing failure, exclusions from indexing, re-indexing, excessive re-indexing, failure to find, iCloud Drive and network shares.
Try searching for something you know is in a file in ~/Library/Preference and you’re unlikely to get any success. This explains how, and why you can’t alter that.
Why Spotlight can now take a long time building and updating its volume indexes. Understand when forcing them to be rebuilt is a good idea, and when it isn’t.
How to prefix a file or folder name with a . to hide it, how to use chflags, and how they differ. And what are all those .DS_Store and ._ files doing?
The Eclectic Light Company 