#Mac search pdf files for text mac#
It’s fast and convenient.īy default, the Finder limits searches to the current folder you’re in, but you can click the This Mac button in the toolbar of the Finder window to expand the search to your entire Mac. I choose Kinds: Image from the drop-down menu, and all of a sudden I’m searching only for image files with the word “logo” in their filename. Once I’ve selected that search term, I type the word “image,” and the Finder offers up several different filters-all images or specific image formats. By selecting that option, I’m kicking off a search for files with the word “logo” in the name. I’ll type a search term like logo and the menu will suggest “Name matches: logo”. As you start typing a phrase in a Finder window’s search box, a drop-down menu will suggest options to apply to your query. This is relatively easy to do in the Finder, via the Find command (Command-F). One of my most common searches is to search for an image with a specific phrase in its name. You can generate complex search queries quickly from a Finder window. You can even use NOT and OR (in capital letters) to limit searches. To find exact phrases, add quotation marks around them. You can type words or phrases from inside documents, and it’ll find them. In recent years Apple has worked to speed up the initial Spotlight search results so it’s easy to use Spotlight to quickly launch pretty much any app on your Mac.īut there’s a lot more you can do with Spotlight. If you keep it simple, just typing the name of the file or app you’re looking for, Spotlight will give you want. The most common ways to search an entire Mac with Spotlight are either through the menu bar item-the magnifying glass, which you can activate by typing Command-Space-or by searching in a Finder window. Spotlight indexes the text of every document it can find, and knows details about the compression formats of video files, the focal length of a digital photo, and much more. In the background, the Spotlight metadata engine is scanning new and changed files on your computer-and it’s not just looking for the names of your files, but is cataloging information about their contents.
Spotlight is a search engine that runs on your Mac. Whole books could be (and have been) written about Spotlight, but let me take you through a few details that you may have never learned. In fact, Spotlight has been around so long that I suspect that most Mac users take it for granted, not entirely understanding just how broad its purview is and how powerful it can be at finding the stuff that’s on your Mac.
#Mac search pdf files for text mac os x#
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 15 years since Apple first announced Spotlight as a banner feature of Mac OS X Tiger.
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