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Unlock The Potential Of Spotlight
Mar 11, 2025
Showing you how to use some of the relatively unknown features of spotlight. Check out http://www.cultofmac.com for more video how-tos I also make tech related videos on my main YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/MSComputerVideos
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hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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some of the secrets of spotlight now for
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most of you i'm guessing that when you
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go up to spotlight and just by clicking
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the magnifying glass in the corner of
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your screen to search for something you
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probably type something like Apple and
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you look for your results from there but
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that's not all spotlight can do there's
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a lot of the functions with it that
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apple doesn't really talk about but they
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make spotlight a really powerful search
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tool and much more powerful than it
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appears on the surface so let's start
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off right away with a keyboard shortcut
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now to access spotlight instead of going
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up and clicking the magnifying glass
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what you can do is you can hit command
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spacebar and it'll bring up spotlight
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and you can start typing so you don't
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have to move your mouse all the way up
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there and click that's pretty nice now
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from here of course you can search
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normal things like once again Apple but
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you can also put things in quotes and
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when things are in quotes I it restricts
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the search so first of all if I search
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something like Apple Computer anything
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that has the word Apple and computer in
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it can show up here in the list but if I
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put quotes around the words Apple
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computer now the documents or whatever
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that shows up has to have that phrase in
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the search so you're not going to get
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results that have just the word Apple
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somewhere and then just over a computer
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you're gonna have you're going to get
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that exact phrase that's handy you can
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do some different words to separate your
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searches as well and those are and not
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and or and you have to type these all in
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caps so the first of all the one that's
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and and is what you're normally going to
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see so if i would type in apple computer
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same thing as typing in apple and
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computer you're going to get the resume
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results if you do that but if you type
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in apple or and i once again in caps
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computer we're going to get results that
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have the word apple or computer you can
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see when I search for apple
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top hit is Apple script editor now let's
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say i don't want apple script and i want
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something else so i can type in apple
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not script and it will give me not that
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results so now i won't see anything with
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script in it so you can see how that
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kind of works another powerful thing is
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i can use kind and then a colon and then
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right after that type whatever kind of
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document or whatever I want so if i type
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kind colon app now it's going to show me
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a list of application and there in order
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of recently used or i could do kind fine
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now it's going to give me a list of
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different fonts this works for pretty
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much anything so i can even do kind
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folder and it'll give me a list of
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folders the possibilities of using kind
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are pretty endless you can do that for
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aliases apps audio safari bookmarks
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contacts emails folders fonts events
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images movies pdfs etc etc keeps going
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on i can also do the same thing with
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name colon firefox i'm i'm only going to
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get results with the name of firefox so
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you can see it just shows me firefox and
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in the firefox application that i have
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on my ipod i can do the same for created
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if i want to find documents that were
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created on a certain date so i can't
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i've been created and i'm going to colon
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and then just for example 6 18 11 so now
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it's going to search everything that was
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created on today and it's going to list
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those all off here and in order of when
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you last opened them or were they when
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they were last created rather i can do
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the same with a date so if I second date
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and I put a specific date it will give
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me things created on that date I can
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also use less than or greater than to
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specify before or after a certain time
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another cool thing if you're looking for
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music you can type in audio bit rate and
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then colon and I'll say go on 256 it
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shows me all the songs with that audio
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bit right Sam for composer to protect
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composer no there's songs with composer
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of Metallica I can do some things with
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photos too so i can type is o and made
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it on iso 100 their show me all the
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pictures taken
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with iso of 100 that's cool I can do
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calculations on your too so out of
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having to go to dashboard to open up
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calculator or even going to open up the
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calculator application I can go to
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spotlight and I can type in something
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like 6 plus 2 6 plus 8 let's say times
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parentheses 9 and now you can see it did
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their parentheses that way i can do
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powers as well so i can do six to the
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eighth power and then you can see that
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pretty much any math function that you
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do on the calculator application you can
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do it here and then when i hit enter it
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pops open calculator if I want to I can
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do definitions to from dictionaries I
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type in Apple let's say you can see
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right here definition and hit enter it
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will pop open dictionary and from here I
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can see the definitions of apple and
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also if I was searching for let's say
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Apple if I go up and I want instead of
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opening something I just want to see
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where it's located in the finder Oh
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first of all if I hover over hover over
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it it will show the path or for
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definition will show the definition but
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if I command click on it then it opens
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up the folder where it's located and
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shows me right there that's handy and
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also if I want to skip down in different
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categories you can see I have top hit
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definitions applications etc I can hold
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down command and use the up and down
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arrows to switch to different categories
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that's neat as well so those are just
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some of the kind of hidden features
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within spotlight and if you and if you
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utilize these to their full capabilities
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spotlight can be a really really
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advanced searching tool and almost as
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advanced as searches within mac OS
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itself in a finder window where you can
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have all these different kinds of last
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open dates you can make it almost as
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powerful as that without having to go
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through all the trouble of entering all
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those things so I hope you found this
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video useful and thank you for watching
#Software Utilities