Monday, 29 November 2010

Finder Spotlight fail

About that Finder is FAIL knows probably every user that migrated  from Linux/Windows to OS X. The list of miss-func^H^H^Hthink-different is long. For most of them i could get used to. But there is one that is really pissing me of, by default Finder Spotlight  (CMD+F) is suggesting to search items by their contents not by name. Obviously there is no setting in Finder Preferences that will allow user to adjust that failing behavior.

Fortunately there is hope. After reverse-engineering saved searches I figured out that there is switch that enforces Finder to search by file name only:



Putting this two lines into /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/default_smart.plist and restarting Finder.app (Alt+Right Click on Finder icon -> Reluch) and now I'm able to search by name always from Finder spotlight. Hurray!

Here is mine default_smart.plist  file.




Update: This option is not global. All File Pickers will not use this option. So in iTunes you will not be able to search file by names in file picker (cmd+o). It seems that iTunes file picker have bug and doesn't ready SearchNameOnly from saved searches as Finder, this is FAIL^2 Steve seriously...