Stop Spotlight jumping the gun
Sometimes a peeve is so strong that you will blog about it, even if it drags your blog way off-topic. That’s how I feel about Spotlight starting to search before I have finished typing what I am looking for. On my middle-aged PowerBook that means a long annoying wait half-way through typing.
Not any more. I’ve stumbled across two ways to stop this:
1. Laserlight is an application written in Applescript that offers you a text box into which you type your query before it gets passed on to Spotlight. Very slick.
2. Quicksilver, the application-launcher-but-so-much-more utility, offers a way to do this as well. If you have the Spotlight plug-in enabled for Quicksilver, call it up, type a full-stop (.) to enter text-entry mode, then type the search phrase you want, hit tab to bring up the actions list, and select the “Search in Spotlight Window” option. Hit return and Quicksilver will pass the whole phrase over to a Spotlight window which it will open for you.
More details on macOSXHints. Thanks to it and to stevebr for posting the tip. macOSXHints is a great site.
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September 14th, 2005 at 12:57 am
Check out this search applet from Apple’s AppleScript product manager, Sal Soghoian:
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2005/07/trigger2/index.php
September 15th, 2005 at 2:03 am
Thanks, Jeff. Good tip!