At Work On a Mac

So we all know and love Spotlight. Ever since it’s appearance in OS X several years ago, it’s been a great way to find files and even to launch applications. As an app launcher, even though it works pretty well, Spotlight has a few shortcomings compared to applications like Launchbar. For one thing, it doesn’t support abbreviations and it can be quite a bit slower to use since it indexes everything.

There is however a few things you can do. First, open the Spotlight preferences in System Preferences and disable everything you don’t care about. I never search for fonts for example, so I always disable that. The key here however is to make sure Applications are at the top of the list.

While you certainly knew about this first tip, you might not know about the second one. Other than filename and content, Spotlight also searches each file’s metadata and one that always exists and is accessible through the Finder is the “Spotlight Comments” field where you can type anything you want.

For the apps you use the most, find their icons in the Finder and type CMD-I to open the Get Info panel. There, you’ll find the Spotlight Comments field. The key here, is to add something unique to make the search fast. I suggest adding “aa” in front for application followed by a few letter. Firefox for example could be aaf. You can then “Cmd-Space” to open spotlight followed by your 3-4 letters abbreviations (“aaf”) followed by enter. The search is almost instant!

This unfortunately doesn’t work with system apps in 10.6 since those are locked when using the Finder. If you have PathFinder, you can actually change them from there.

Hello world. With a friend of mine, we decided to devote a BLOG to working with a Mac. I will tend to focus on the communications aspects and my friend will bring technical insights into the project. A bit like the PC and Mac guys commercial except that both of us will be Mac guys. As the name suggests we intend to focus on simple programs, tips, gizmos or other that all help you be more productive with a Mac. Apple has almost always focused on the Mac as being a great entertainment machine (and that it is) but since we work with Macs we would like to share how great the Mac is for everyday work. I just attended DIGIWORLD 2007 in Montpellier, a telecommunications event and the YOUTUBE presenter was using a Mac for his presentation—he was using PowerPoint, nobody’s perfect and that was great to see. In general, business people use PCs and PowerPoint. I have a lot to say on the topic, so I’ll reserve that for a rainy day. Welcome to Mac2Work!