In Leopard, Spotlight has been configured in such a way that it can search much faster than that of Tiger. Some Spotlight searching tricks below will certainly improve your productivity.

Adding Specific Keywords

By typing search terms as described above, you ask Spotlight to search only for certain type of file. However, you still don't know exactly what kind of keywords that can be used for this. Fortunately, Leopard happily provides you with detailed information regarding to that and here we will gladly deliver it to you.

.	File Type	Keyword
1	Applications	application, applications, app
2	Contacts	contact, contacts
3	Folders	folder, folders
4	Email	email, emails, mail message, mail messages
5	iCal Events	event, events
6	iCal To Dos	todo, todos, to do, to dos
7	Images	image, images
8	Movies	movie, movies
9	Music	music
10	Audio	audio
11	PDF	pdf, pdfs
12	Preferences	system preferences, preferences
13	Bookmarks	bookmark, bookmarks
14	Fonts	font, fonts
15	Presentations	presentations, presentation

Focusing Search

Warning : The Spotlight Preference settings on the image above is not under copyright.

Spotlight indexes and searches everything on your Leopard. Though Spotlight returns the search result really quick, you still need to filter the result which will slow you down. Image above displays the path, which is Menubar ▸ Apple ▸ System Preferences ▸ Spotlight Preferences, and the way to enable/disable some of the categories of your Spotlight search, which can be done by ticking/unticking the check boxes.

Determining Action

16	Return	Open highlighted file with default application
17	Cmd-Return	Open file in Finder

Most of the time the first action will be taken. However, you still need to aware of the existence of the second action, which will take you to your file location, for performing further action. For more complete keyboard shortcuts, you can refer to my other article, which lists down almost all useful keyboard shortcuts for Leopard, entitle Mac OS X Leopard: 200+ Productivity Booster Keyboard Shortcuts.

Activating Icon View, Quick Look or Slideshow

18	Option-Return	Show all results in Finder
19	Cmd-A	Select all files
20	Cmd-Y	Quick Look
21	Cmd-Option-Y	Full Screen Slideshow
22	Cmd-1	Icon view

If your purpose is to search for images, photos, or movies, you can use Quick Look, which is the new feature in Leopard, Slideshow or Icon view to view all the search results. Combining this with the first trick, adding specific keyword, will further improve your productivity. Also, Show Index Sheet while in Quick Look or Slideshow is advisable.

Double-Quote for Exact Phrase

Whenever you know exactly the phrase that you want to search, don't be hesitate to use Double-Quote. With phrase put in between Double-Quote, Spotlight will return the searching result of several separate words as an unity.

Utilizing Spotlight Window

23	Cmd-Space	Open Spotlight menu
24	Cmd-Option-Space	Open Spotlight window
25	Cmd-2	List view
26	Cmd-4	Coverflow view

There are several benefits you can achieve from utilizing Spotlight window instead of using single Spotlight menu :

1. Wider range of results
2. Easier to extract more information
3. More advance feature, such as sorting results, view as list, or view as the Leopard new feature coverflow

Mastering Logical Expression

23	NOT [term]	Result doesn't contain the term
24	[term-1] AND [term-2] AND ... AND [term-n]	Result contains all term-1, term-2 up to term-n
25	[term-1] OR [term-2] OR ... OR [term-n]	Result contains one of the terms
26	Parentheses	Set the priority of the logical operation (NOT-AND-OR by default)
27	NOT ([term-1] OR [term-2] OR ... OR [term-n])	Result doesn't contain all of the terms
28	NOT [term-1] AND [term-2] OR [term-1] AND NOT [term-2]	Also known as Exclusive-OR, which the result MUST contain one of term-1 and term-2

That are many more logical expressions that can be build by using only NOT, AND and OR. However, those above that we listed are really useful and come in handy for your searching activity.

Extra: Calculator

I don't know it's considered time-saving to perform calculator in your Spotlight. But for sure, Spotlight supports this feature. To use Spotlight's calculator, simply put the arithmetic expression to your Spotlight, but you should avoid hitting Return or your Spotlight will launch Calculator for you.

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