Search for metadata

When you perform a normal Spotlight search through the  🔍  icon in the menubar, Spotlight uses its metadata indexes which include all the text in these five extended attributes. However, there is a more powerful way of harnessing them, in Finder’s  Find  command. 

Before you can use this, add the four accessible extended attributes to the search criteria. Open a new window in the Finder, and select the  Find  command in the  File  menu. This changes the window from a normal Finder view to a Find window, in which the lowest row in the top part of the window contains search criteria, by default set to  Kind is Any

Open the popup menu containing the first part of that,  Kind , and at the foot of that menu you will see the option  Other…  Choose that option to open the search attributes, and in that list tick the checkboxes next to  Headline Descriptions Keywords , and  Copyright . This adds them to that popup menu.

Now, you can perform Finder searches using the contents of those four extended attributes.

⚠️  There doesn’t appear to be any way to add  Creator  to the search attributes used here, but the other four extended attributes are fully supported. Applications which support Spotlight-based search may also offer these extended attributes in their search criteria; that varies according to the app.

➜  back to welcome


The Eclectic Light Company – https://eclecticlight.co