OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Using Spotlight

Now that you're aware of what Spotlight is and have a rough understanding of how it works, it's time to put it into action. Searching in Spotlight couldn't be easier (at least not when you do a simple text search). In its most basic form, a Spotlight search is a single word, such as the name of an application, a contact, or a file you know the name of but not its immediate location.

You can perform a Spotlight search in one of three ways:

• By clicking the Spotlight icon menu in the menu bar: This opens the Spotlight search window near the upper right of your screen, in which you can type a search term, as Figure 5.1 shows.

• From the Search field in a Finder window, as Figure 5.2 shows: This option gives you more flexibility and control for your search, as I explain shortly.

• By pressing Shift++spacebar to get the Spotlight search menu or Option++spacebar to get a Finder window to search from: These shortcuts aren't on by default; you turn them on in the Spotlight system preference (see Chapter 27), where you also can assign other keyboard shortcuts instead of these defaults, as well as change the order of the Spotlight results.

Spotlight searches from the menu bar

Running Spotlight from the menu bar is the easiest and typically the most common method of searching—especially ...