Have any other insight into this, or any interesting tips or tricks for Spotlight or navigating file paths or the file system? Share with us in the comments below.
Similarly, you can also open websites and URLs from Spotlight on the Mac too, which is another handy feature. If you’re the type of Mac user who frequently uses file, folder, and directory paths, give this a try, it’s pretty useful! And while it’s not a replacement for Go To Folder, the convenience alone is worth tucking this tip into your bag of tricks.
Unlike the similar command for Go To Folder which supports tab completion, tab completion does not work when entering file system paths into Spotlight, so if you want that capability you’ll want to stick with Go To Folder instead. You may find this particularly helpful if you have copied a file path from Finder (or elsewhere) and have that in your clipboard, as you can just paste it directly into Spotlight to access whatever the file or folder is. Or you can quickly access the current user Home folder by typing “~/” and hitting return, which will immediately open the users home folder into a new Finder window. Optionally, hit return / enter to open the file system path directly in Finderįor example, you can quickly access /Applications by typing that into Spotlight and hitting the return key.Enter the file system path into Spotlight.
How to Use File System Paths in Spotlight on Mac
You can also perform a system-wide re-index of the Spotlight database, among many other optimizations, using Titanium Software's free Onyx utility, which is available for all recent versions of macOS.Of course if you’re an advanced Mac user you may already be accustomed with the excellent ‘Go To Folder’ Mac function and keyboard shortcut, but this Spotlight Path feature may be new to some users, and it’s also nice to have an alternative method for accessing file system if you happen to have a path ready. With a bit of luck, your Spotlight problems will have been resolved once indexing is complete. Depending on which version of macOS you're running, you may see a rebuild progress indicator in Spotlight's menu bar item. Once you've completed these steps, Spotlight will begin reindexing the contents of the folder(s) or disk(s) you chose, which may take some time and a few processor cycles.
Select the folder or disk whose index you wish to re-build, then click Choose. To disable Gatekeeper, you first have to open up a Terminal window on your Mac device.from the Apple () menu at the top left of your screen.
There are Terminal commands that will do the job, but you can achieve the same result via the regular macOS user interface in just a few quick steps. If you're experiencing odd behavior when using Spotlight, you should try rebuilding its search database index. If Spotlight can't find files that you know exist on your Mac, or if it stops prioritizing results based on your earlier searches, then it's probably a sign that your system's search index is damaged somehow. That's not to say its core function is infallible, however. Nevertheless, helping you find apps, documents and other files stored on your Mac is still what Spotlight does best. Apple has enhanced Spotlight search in macOS in recent years, with the addition of Spotlight Suggestions allowing it to tap into a variety of online data sources like weather and sports.