I am an hardcore Mac OS X fan. I’ve been using one continually since 1989 and don’t plan on changing anytime soon. My computer does what I need it to do, and it does so quickly, easily and efficiently. My biggest (minor) complaint has to do with Spotlight file searches.
I do literally hundreds of file searches every week, almost always in a specific folder, trying to find a specific file or folder. I always know where the file is because I’m insanely organized, I just want to find it quickly within a folder full of other documents.
Regardless, any search defaults to This Mac. Even if you’re in your Logos folder, searching for a specific logo, any search will default to searching every single file on your computer – you need to manually click on the name of the folder you want to search.
I understand that Spotlight is meant to work this way – it scans everything on your computer so you can find it instantly, and it’s insanely great at that. But for someone like me with hundreds of thousands of files, it just doesn’t’ work.
I opened the folder I wanted to search, but still have to tell the computer which folder to search – that’s one extra click for every single search I do.
This issue has bugged me for years and today I found a way to make searches work better for me. It’s one of those small irritations that build during a day, never irritating enough to search for a solution, but pure joy once you figure out how to solve it. And it couldn’t be simpler.
Go to Finder > Preferences and right there, plain as day you have an option for where to perform a search. Click on Search the Current Folder and you’re good to go.
If my calculations are correct, this discovery could save me nearly 5 hours of work every year (hey, I’m a designer, not a mathematician).
I’m sure most people have probably figured this out by now, but for those who haven’t bothered to even try, I hope this makes your life just a little bit easier!
