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Mac 101: Spotlight

  • Last Modified: December 18, 2009
  • Article: HT2531
  • Old Article: 304778

Summary

Your Mac may be the center of your world, holding vast amounts of applications, and files ranging from the last family get-together, to school homework, to important work presentations. Use Spotlight when you need to find something fast and easy.

Products Affected

Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X 10.3, Mac OS X 10.2, Mac OS X 10.1, Mac OS X 10.0, Mac OS X 10.5, Spotlight, Mac OS X 10.6

Not only will Spotlight start finding files the moment you start typing in the Spotlight search field, it'll display files, folders, and applications whose names match your search criteria, as well as files that contain your criteria within them, such as in text documents, applications, emails, calendars, and more. For example, if you type "sandra", Spotlight will locate emails that have this name, as well as documents that contain the text "sandra" in them.

Here's how to use Spotlight to find what you need.

You can access Spotlight from its menu bar icon or in any Finder window

  1. Spotlight is available system-wide. To access it, click the Spotlight icon in the upper-right corner of your screen (or press Command-Space Bar) and type what you're looking for in the resulting field, or type your search criteria in the search field in any Finder, System Preferences, or application window that supports it. For example, you can type ".jpg" if you want to find all JPEG images on your Mac, or type a friend's email address and a couple keywords to locate a particular email from your friend about the subject matter you specified.
  2. The moment you start typing, Spotlight begins to show you what it has found, organizing your results by category (including Applications, Documents, Images, and PDF Documents). The more you type, the more refined your results will be. Tip: You can use the Spotlight pane of System Preferences to arrange the order of these categories and specify categories which will appear.
  3. If there are a lot of results, Spotlight won't display everything in the menu or window.
    If you want to see everything, click Show All to open a Finder window that shows all results.
  4. From within the Finder window, you can click one of the buttons below the window toolbar to tell Spotlight where and what to search. For example, click This Mac to search everywhere on your Mac, or click your user account name to have Spotlight search everything in your home folder.  
    Also, you can click Contents for your search to include the contents of the files, or click File Name to have your search apply only to the File Name of your files. 
  5. To open an item in the results list, just select it if you're viewing the Spotlight menu, or double-click the item if you're looking at results in the Finder.

Tip: Want to learn more about Spotlight? Check out the built-in Mac Help guide on your Mac (in the Finder, choose Mac Help from the Help menu and type "Spotlight" in the search field).

 

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