El Capitan's Little Known Spotlight Features That Will Make Your Life Easier

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The updated and refined Spotlight is one of the major changes to El Capitan. All is good, but most of the new products are available only in a limited number of countries, and there is nothing you can do about it. Nevertheless, there are a dozen more useful functions left in the staff assistant, which few people know about.

We perform mathematical operations

If you are too lazy to open the calculator, the Spotlight line will do a good job with simple math operations.

The result is also saved there, which means that if you need to make adjustments, you can always do it before the next request.

Speed up your workflow with shortcuts

Surely you know very well about Cmd + Space, so let's move on to the little-known key combinations.

Holding Alt displays the path to the selected item at the bottom of the Spotlight window.
Cmd + R or Cmd + Enter - go to this file in the Finder or, in the case of contacts or mail messages, in the corresponding native applications.
Cmd + L opens the meaning of the word in the system dictionary.
Cmd + I opens an information window in the case of files, folders or applications.
Cmd + B makes an identical request in the default browser.
Cmd + Backspace clears the Spotlight search bar completely.
Cmd + Z. The familiar combination of going back a step is useful here as well. With this shortcut, you can go back a few queries.

Moving the window and search results

In Yosemite, the Spotlight pop-up was always centered, leaving no room for anything you opened in other windows. El Capitan now has the ability to move the helper window freely.

In addition to the Spotlight window, you can also move search results. For example, DOC files can be moved to the TextEdit icon if you don't want to start standard Word or Pages. In addition, when you drag items to the desktop, a copy is automatically created. This action is available even for dictionary definitions. If you move them to the Finder, the system will create a link to that word.

Searching using natural search

Finding documents you worked on last week or emails from a specific recipient for July is now easier. This is one of the few new Spotlight products available in our countries.

However, there is one significant caveat. For the Photos from last June request to work, English must be set as the preferred language.

Viewing recently opened files

Several standard and third-party applications have already integrated this capability into Spotlight. For example, TextEdit and Preview, VLC and MPlayerX media players show a list of recently opened files in the right column.

Unfortunately, this feature is not yet supported by mail, contacts or office suite applications, in which the new product would look especially advantageous.

Using Spotlight as a Music Player

In this form, the system assistant is even more convenient than the iTunes mini-windows. We enter there the name of a song, artist or album from the local library, press the play button in the right column and we can minimize Spotlight - the music will play in the background.

To pause, you need to call the helper window again.

Finding events associated with a contact

To view all files, correspondence, calendar events related to one or another acquaintance from the contact list, find the Spotlight item in the Edit tab of the corresponding application. Clicking on it will open all associated files in a Finder window.

Filtering results

Similar to filtering results in the Google search engine, Spotlight has the ability to search among specific file types. Here are some of the options for Spotlight: