- Mac's built-in search engine can be accessed by two methods. In the list of shortcuts, you may have noticed that you can access Spotlight with the shortcut of Command and Spacebar. Alternatively, you can click the magnifying glass located in the menu bar at top right corner of the window.
- Spotlight search will still function from the Finder and when summoned with a keyboard shortcut, but will no longer trespass upon your menu bar. Reverting your changes If you’re already missing the convenience and charm of Spotlight in your menu bar, we can easily reverse our changes to resuscitate the little fellow.
Basic Searching with Spotlight in Mac OS X. Figure 1: A single Spotlight search box. To run a search, simply click in the Spotlight box and begin typing. Matching items appear as soon as you type, as shown in Figure 2, and the search results are continually refined while you type the rest of your search criteria. How To Customize Spotlight Search in Mac OS X Yosemite Tip #1 Change or Disable Spotlight's Keyboard Shortcut. Tip #2 Organize & Remove Spotlight Entries. Tip #4 Prevent Spotlight from Searching Certain Locations. Tip #5 Stop Spotlight from Tracking You. Tip #6 Prevent Spotlight Search from Show.
If you ever used a Mac, try the search tool, Spotlight, on the upper right corner. You will notice the speed in returning search results is significantly quicker than Window’s search from the start menu. For Windows 8 or 8.1, Microsoft has improved its search function dramatically, especially in Windows 8.1, which now does universal search of both local files and online results. However, if you are still on the previous version of Windows or don’t like the new Windows 8’s search from the start menu. Then Launchy is the perfect alternative for find quick files and/or applications on your Windows.
Things You Can Do With Launchy
Launchy is an open source keystroke launcher. By default, it shares the same shortcut as Spotlight on Mac. You can activate Launchy by press “Alt + Space”. Once it is activated, you can start type the application you’d like to open. It will then show a list of matching applications from the dropdown list.
If there is only one match, it will just show this match instead.
Customizations on Launchy
There are quite a few things you can do to customize the Launchy to your own look and feel. There are few skins you can pick from out of box. If those don’t match your taste, there are more customized skins you can download and install from their site.
The important thing that makes Launchy so quick in search and return relevant results is because it only searches in a very specific section of your machine. You can add more directories here to include into the search. You can also associate different file types to enable Launchy not only search and launch application but also find files and open them as well.
Apart from the changes you can do with what to show in the search result, there are also some quick visual animation tweaks you can apply with. For instance, you can configure Lanuchy to always show on Top or everything else. You can also change the number of search results returned in the dropdown list, etc.
Give Launchy a try, and you may find it to be very useful to quickly get to the app you need and get things done more efficiently.
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If you never use the Spotlight feature on your Mac, or if you only use it from the Finder rather than from the menu bar, you may have wondered how to get rid of its icon. Whilst most of the menu bar icons can be hidden with user-accessible toggles from System Preferences, Spotlight’s little magnifying glass is not so easily removed from the top right-hand corner of your screen.
After a lot of investigation I had only found methods which either disabled Spotlight entirely, removing your ability to search the file system, or else hid Spotlight temporarily, with it returning every time a change was made to the file system. However, I was eventually able to find a solution which has neither of these downsides.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to get rid of the Spotlight icon, and regain an iron-fisted control over the content of your menu bar.
Instructions
Please bear in mind that modifications to system files can cause problems if carried out incorrectly. Enter the following commands carefully, and proceed at your own risk.
1) Before you begin, you must disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) on your Mac. The file we are dealing with is not modifiable without this step. To disable SIP, follow our guide on the subject. If you are on Mac OS X El Capitan or earlier this step is not required, as you have no SIP.
2) Once SIP is disabled, launch the Terminal application from /Applications/Utilities, or via Spotlight in the top-right of your screen (as a way of saying goodbye).
3) At the Terminal command prompt, type the following and hit Enter:
cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS
This moves us into the directory we want to edit.
4) Then enter the following:
sudo cp Spotlight Spotlight.bak
This makes a backup of the file we are going to edit so that if something goes wrong, we can revert.
5) Enter your password when prompted.
6) Now type ls into Terminal and press Enter. It should print a list of two files.
Spotlight.bak is the backup you created in Step 4.
Spotlight is the file we are about to edit.
Spotlight is the file we are about to edit.
Do not proceed if you cannot see both files, as it means you do not have the backup file Spotlight.bak to revert to. You must have this file in case you wish to revert your changes later.
If you can see both files, proceed to Step 7.
7)a) If you are on OS X 10.11, or macOS 10.12-10.14 (El Capitan through to Mojave), enter the following command in Terminal:
sudo perl -pi -e 's|(x00x00x00x00x00x00x47x40x00x00x00x00x00x00)x42x40(x00x00x80x3fx00x00x70x42)|$1x00x00$2|sg' Spotlight
7)b) If you are on OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), enter the following command in Terminal (all on one line):
Open Spotlight Search Mac
sudo perl -pi -e 's|(x48xb8x00x00x00x00x00x00)x42x40(x48x89x47x10x48xB8x00x00x00x00x00x00x36x40)|$1x00x00$2|sg' Spotlight
This command patches Spotlight to make the icon width zero. This effectively makes the item invisible on your menu bar, without disabling Spotlight itself.
8) Enter the following command into Terminal, and press Enter:
cmp -l Spotlight Spotlight.bak
You should see Terminal print out something similar to this:
248855 0 102
248856 0 100
We are comparing the two files here. If the command does not print out anything at all, then the process has not worked and you should follow our process below for reverting the changes we have made.
9) Now enter this into Terminal:
sudo codesign -f -s - Spotlight
This signs our new Spotlight ready for use. If you receive an error here related to missing Command Line Tools and xcrun, install Xcode or run “xcode-select –install” in Terminal, both of which will provide the missing tools for the job.
10) And finally, this:
How To Spotlight Search Mac
sudo killall Spotlight
This restarts the Spotlight daemon to make our changes effective.
Your entire Terminal session should look something like mine below:
Spotlight might ask for access to your keychain again, select Always Allow. It may also ask for some other privileges such as Calendars and Contacts access. Grant or deny those as you see fit. Check the top-right corner of your screen to confirm that the icon is gone. If it’s not, try a reboot.
11) Once you’ve confirmed that it works, re-enable SIP.
That should do it. Spotlight search will still function from the Finder and when summoned with a keyboard shortcut, but will no longer trespass upon your menu bar.
Reverting your changes
If you’re already missing the convenience and charm of Spotlight in your menu bar, we can easily reverse our changes to resuscitate the little fellow.
1) Disable SIP again.
2) Open the Terminal application. Computer internet software free download.
3) At the prompt, enter the following, and press Enter:
cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS
4) Next enter this:
sudo mv Spotlight.bak Spotlight
5) Enter your password when prompted.
6) Now enter this command:
Spotlight Search Engine
sudo killall Spotlight
6) Check that the Spotlight icon has returned to the menu bar. If it hasn’t, reboot your machine.
7) Re-enable SIP.
Fix Spotlight Search Mac
Let me know if you have any problems, or if you want any other how-to guides putting together for your Mac.