How To Search For Directory Or File On Mac

If you want to gzip a file or a directory, you can do it by running a simple command using Terminal. Step 1: Go to Spotlight Search and type Terminal and Example for dir: tar cvf - myDirToCompress gzip > myDirToCompress.gzip. Warning: When you gzip compress file using gzip command on the.

In OS X, Spotlight is an effective way to search your entire hard drive for a file or folder, email, or any other file. There are many other things Spotlight can do, and searching for files is just one of them. Spotlight is also capable of looking up dictionary definitions, launching apps, performing calculations, previewing audio, video, documents, and other files. This article will outline some of the benefits of using Spotlight and how to use Smart Folders, which allow you to search for a file even if you don’t know its name. Basic searching, Spotlight can be used to search your hard drive for any file, folder, or email based on the search criteria being in the title or the body. So, if you have a document that you’ve lost, and you aren’t sure of the title, you can search using a word that you know is in the body of the document.

This also works for emails. For example, in the search result above, the Documents section displays Evernote,_Getting_Started_925.pages because the word “article” is in the body of the document. Previewing files in Spotlight When the search result is displayed, you can mouse over the file name and a preview of it will appear to the left. This works for many types of files such as images, documents of all kinds, and more. For audio and video files, you can play or preview the file right in Spotlight, by moving your cursor over the file and clicking the play button.

The result of the search might include a large number of files. If that occurs, you may be able to find the file more easily by clicking the List View icon, and then Arrange icon and changing to sort by Date Modified or Name. Also, typing a more specific search in Spotlight may narrow the search result. Moving documents with “Move To” Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and TextEdit have a handy “Move To” option on the File menu.

For documents like those, it make sense to simply open the document by clicking on it in the Spotlight search result, and the using File > “Move To” and save the file to the location you want. Searching by file extension To search for files by file extension, type the “.” in the search. For example, if you are trying to locate all the Pages files on you your computer you would type “.pages” in your Spotlight search. Tangentially, if you have ever burned on your Mac, you may be able to free up significant space on your hard drive by searching for “.dvdproj” in Spotlight. If you decide you no longer need a (typically large) DVD project file and delete it, it does not delete the movie from iMovie.

Launching apps A simple but efficient way to take advantage of Spotlight is to use it to launch apps. To quickly launch an app that is not on your dock, just type the first few letters in Spotlight and press the Enter key. Using Spotlight as a dictionary or calculator If you type a word in Spotlight, one of the results is a dictionary definition of that word. Moving your cursor over in the search result displays a definition. Clicking on Dictionary opens the Dictionary app, where a thesaurus and Wikipedia view are also available using the buttons at the top.