Tiger introduces Spotlight, a breakthrough new desktop search technology that finds anything on your computer as quickly as you type. Search your entire system from one place: Files, emails, contacts, images, calendars and applications appear instantly.

The Need for Speed

Spotlight blazes through all of your files and applications and displays the results literally as fast as you can type in search words. Instead of waiting to see results after you’ve hit Enter, you’ll see results as soon as you type the very first letter. The powerful Spotlight file indexing process occurs transparently and in the background, so you never experience lag times or slowdowns. And when you make a change, such as adding a new file, receiving an email or entering a new contact, Spotlight updates its index automatically, so search results are always up-to-the-moment accurate, too.

No Stone Unturned

A permanent new fixture of Tiger’s menu bar, the convenient Spotlight search field provides instant results encompassing not only files, folders and documents but also messages in Mail, contacts in Address Book, iCal calendars, System Preferences and applications. With Spotlight, you always find what you’re looking for, even if you don’t know where to look. Spotlight even ensures that others only search for what they're allowed to find. Files they shouldn't see simply never appear in Spotlight search results, keeping your data safe from prying eyes.

Searching with Smarts

The Spotlight engine automatically indexes all the meta-data inside files — the “what, when and who” of every piece of information saved on your Mac — including the kind of content, the author, edit history, format, size and many more details. Most documents, including Microsoft Word documents, Photoshop images and emails, already contain rich meta-data. And Spotlight indexes content as well, displaying results based on what appears inside a file or document, not just its title.

Looks Easy

Intelligent search capability enables Spotlight to find what you want with uncanny accuracy, even when you don’t know many details. For example, if you know roughly when you saved or received something, you can use relative time periods like “Last Week” or “Yesterday” to find it. If you’re not sure of an item’s file format, type in a category like “Movie,” “Image” or “Document.” Spotlight displays a neatly sorted result list that you can easily browse to find what you want.

You can also use descriptive search words to get amazingly targeted results, even across thousands of files. For example, to find portrait-formatted images, just type “Image” and “Portrait.” To find everything from a colleague, simply type the person’s name. Spotlight returns every document she authored or edited, every image she may have emailed, messages she wrote (and messages you sent to her) and her contact information. Results are shown in sorted, automatic categories for easy browsing, picking and clicking.

Organically Organized

Thanks to the speed and flexibility of Spotlight, you will discover countless new ways to organize your files. Take the results of a search and save it as a Smart Folder that automatically updates as you add or remove documents from your Mac. Smart Folders contain files grouped together based on search criteria instead of physical location, so the same file can appear in multiple Smart Folders without moving from its original saved location on your system. No need to duplicate, shift or update files: Spotlight Smart Folders keep everything organized for you.

Star Power

Spotlight illuminates every corner of your Mac, searching across the Finder, System Preferences and OS X applications including Mail and Address Book. Perform a Finder search that goes beyond mere filenames and location: With Spotlight, the Finder now locates any file by content and meta-data. Find the exact location of system setting controls in System Preferences by running a Spotlight keyword search. Set up Smart Mailboxes according to Spotlight search queries — email to or from specific contacts, email about a particular keyword — and Mail files away your messages automatically. Create Smart Groups in Address Book using Spotlight searches on card content including birthdays, anniversaries and location. Everything on your Mac gets a chance to shine.

First, Fastest, Finest

Instead of developing a monolithic search feature, Mac OS X Tiger is the first operating system to provide an elegant array of optimized search technologies. Developers can harness this power to extend Spotlight for use with new applications. Spotlight technologies work together to deliver performance and convenience that will change how you find, organize and value the information saved on your computer.

Supported File Formats