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Store your files in a file structure that makes sense so you know where things are? I have never used Spotlight to find a file because I put files in sensible

Store your files in a file structure that makes sense so you know where things are? I have never used Spotlight to find a file because I put files in sensible places.

giantrobot 9mo ago
I use Spotlight all the time to search for the contents of files. I don't memorize the contents and names of every file on my system, that's what my computer is for.
- analogpixel 9mo ago
  this is what grep is for. Why do I need a service constantly indexing my system and wasting resources for the few times a month I might need to run grep <string>? what problem was really solved here?
  - zapzupnz 9mo ago
    Does grep work on anything other than plain text? And then you'll have to wait for grep to trawl every folder to find the right file rather than consult an optimised index.
  - giantrobot 9mo ago
    Ah yes, grep's famous support of PDF and Office documents will surely come in handy. As will its image OCR capabilities. Oh it doesn't have those things so is a non-option. Tahoe in general sucks but Spotlight has been a pretty good local search for nearly twenty years. The image OCR added in Sonoma made it even more useful.
- josephg 9mo ago
  I want spotlight to open applications and system settings. But full disk indexing makes spotlight basically useless for that, because its index is filled with crap. Instead of opening zed I accidentally open some random header file that’s sitting around in Xcode. It’s worse than useless. And that says nothing of the grotesque amount of cpu time spotlight wants to spend indexing all my files. A feature I never wanted has ruined a feature I do want. It’s a complete own goal. In frustration I turned spotlight off completely a few months ago. Rip.
  - analogpixel 9mo ago
    I think it's been said in this thread already, but it sounds like what you want is Alfred https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/ it's a great app, use it every few minutes every day. also, for opening apps, https://charmstone.app/ https://charmstone.app/ is pretty great.
    - freehorse 9mo ago
      I am also in OP's boat and, even though these are great suggestions, personally I would like to be able to do a basic thing such as opening an app with a built-in way rather than having to download yet another app to do that. Every major macos update I have to worry about spotlight reindexing things. What I find really annoying with macos is that with stock/default settings it is the worst UX. You have to download an app to launch apps, an app to move and resize windows, an app to reverse the mouse's wheel direction to be the opposite of the trackpad, an app to manage the menu bar (esp decrease the spacing, so that you can fit items up until the notch). Then, you also need anyway to spend an hour tweaking settings and run custom commands (such as `defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false` so that you can actually type stuff like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa). These are just needed to make using macos bearable, and do not include any kind of "power user" kind of stuff. I used to hate macos before getting my own mac, because I had to use some at work in their default settings and it was just a horrible experience.
- innagadadavida 9mo ago
  Spotlight search relevancy is a complete joke. If only they did some embedding based search across the system and paid attention to basic precision recall numbers. This has gone from bad to worse quickly.
zapzupnz 9mo ago
> I put files in sensible places Good for you. Do you want a medal? Finding files often means more than just looking in folders for adequately named files. Sometimes, it's looking for the contents of files, for things that aren't files (because some kinds of files on macOS aren't actually files, they're folders that are treated specially by the system), and for things like contacts, calendar events, reminders, mail, etc.
- analogpixel 9mo ago
  > Do you want a medal? Only if it's tastefully done, and says something like "Grep Champion"

Store your files in a file structure that makes sense so you know where things are? I have never used Spotlight to find a file because I put files in sensible places.

giantrobot 9mo ago

I use Spotlight all the time to search for the contents of files. I don't memorize the contents and names of every file on my system, that's what my computer is for.

analogpixel 9mo ago
this is what grep is for. Why do I need a service constantly indexing my system and wasting resources for the few times a month I might need to run grep <string>? what problem was really solved here?
- zapzupnz 9mo ago
  Does grep work on anything other than plain text? And then you'll have to wait for grep to trawl every folder to find the right file rather than consult an optimised index.
- giantrobot 9mo ago
  Ah yes, grep's famous support of PDF and Office documents will surely come in handy. As will its image OCR capabilities. Oh it doesn't have those things so is a non-option. Tahoe in general sucks but Spotlight has been a pretty good local search for nearly twenty years. The image OCR added in Sonoma made it even more useful.
josephg 9mo ago
I want spotlight to open applications and system settings. But full disk indexing makes spotlight basically useless for that, because its index is filled with crap. Instead of opening zed I accidentally open some random header file that’s sitting around in Xcode. It’s worse than useless. And that says nothing of the grotesque amount of cpu time spotlight wants to spend indexing all my files. A feature I never wanted has ruined a feature I do want. It’s a complete own goal. In frustration I turned spotlight off completely a few months ago. Rip.
- analogpixel 9mo ago
  I think it's been said in this thread already, but it sounds like what you want is Alfred https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/ it's a great app, use it every few minutes every day. also, for opening apps, https://charmstone.app/ https://charmstone.app/ is pretty great.
  - freehorse 9mo ago
    I am also in OP's boat and, even though these are great suggestions, personally I would like to be able to do a basic thing such as opening an app with a built-in way rather than having to download yet another app to do that. Every major macos update I have to worry about spotlight reindexing things. What I find really annoying with macos is that with stock/default settings it is the worst UX. You have to download an app to launch apps, an app to move and resize windows, an app to reverse the mouse's wheel direction to be the opposite of the trackpad, an app to manage the menu bar (esp decrease the spacing, so that you can fit items up until the notch). Then, you also need anyway to spend an hour tweaking settings and run custom commands (such as `defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false` so that you can actually type stuff like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa). These are just needed to make using macos bearable, and do not include any kind of "power user" kind of stuff. I used to hate macos before getting my own mac, because I had to use some at work in their default settings and it was just a horrible experience.
innagadadavida 9mo ago
Spotlight search relevancy is a complete joke. If only they did some embedding based search across the system and paid attention to basic precision recall numbers. This has gone from bad to worse quickly.

zapzupnz 9mo ago

> I put files in sensible places Good for you. Do you want a medal? Finding files often means more than just looking in folders for adequately named files. Sometimes, it's looking for the contents of files, for things that aren't files (because some kinds of files on macOS aren't actually files, they're folders that are treated specially by the system), and for things like contacts, calendar events, reminders, mail, etc.

analogpixel 9mo ago
> Do you want a medal? Only if it's tastefully done, and says something like "Grep Champion"