Spotlight (software)
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Spotlightscreenshot.jpg
Spotlight is a fast, as-you-type, system-wide desktop search feature found in Mac OS X v10.4. Using a metadata search engine, Spotlight is designed to locate a wide variety of items on the computer, including documents, pictures, music, applications, System Preference panes, as well as specific words in documents and PDFs. Spotlight builds a database of metadata keywords in files on the user's hard drive, initially when Mac OS 10.4 is installed, and continuously in the background as files are updated. Searches can also be modified with date created, date modified, size, type and many more attributes.
Spotlight features a developer API (application program interface) that allows the creation of plug-ins, meaning that developers can add Spotlight search capabilities to their own programs in their own proprietary data file formats.
External links
- Apple's Spotlight website (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html)
- Working with Spotlight (http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html)
- Spotlight Technology Brief (http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/MacOSX_Spotlight_TB.pdf) (PDF file)it:Apple Spotlight