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NotLight 1.4

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Simple Spotlight front-end substitute. Free

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Matt Neuberg

NotLight, a simple Spotlight front-end substitute.

Access the real power of Spotlight:

Automatically do wildcard searches
Do exact searches
Specify case-sensitivity or word-based searches
Construct complex boolean searches with AND, OR, and NOT

At present it's very simple: the only searches you can do are filename and content. Results are a simple list of filename and paths.

What's New

Version 1.4: Release notes were unavailable when this listing was updated.

Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.4 or later

iFileX

+1
Free

Sophisticated file searching ...

NotLight User Discussion (Write a Review)

ver. 1.x:

Your rating: Now say why...

Overall:

(2)

sort: smiles | time

+54

Markus Winter commented on 03 Apr 2012

Download link is no longer valid - you can get it directly from Matt Neuberg's site at http://sbc.apeth.com/downloads/NotLight.zip

[Version 1.4]

Qwerty Denzel commented on 07 Mar 2006

Minor Interface Bug?
Tick and untick 'Auto-Contains Mode', button 'Insert "Contains" Wildcards' is enabled. Either the tick button or the other button should be enabled/selected on startup.

[Version 1.0]

Szabesz reviewed on 15 Feb 2006

It deserves 5 stars just for the effort itself! Thank you! Please keep up the good work and add a "reveal in Finder" feature which is a must I think.

(I cannot really explain how much I hate Apple's Spotlight interface, which is the worst thing they have ever "invented", because it is far from being userfriendly. Why do they suppose that I want to search in "everything"? Why do they suppose that I want to replace my active(!!!) Finder window with a search interface???????? This is so micro$oft like. These are the things why we do hate the interface of windows....)

[Version 0.9]

-6

foulger commented on 06 Feb 2006

At Last!!! Spotlight is too in depth, the normal Find Command is clunky and doesn't allow a user specified primary search field.

This is quick & dirty & can only get better.

Thanks for this simple little app.

[Version 0.5]

-2

sjj_public commented on 31 Jan 2006

This is a good idea, but of limited value at the moment. The dialog results window isn't an improvement over spotlight, but the search itself is. However, the use of kMDItemDisplayName for filename searches is inherently problematic. When you have a wildcard name search, people are going to expect *.doc to match all .doc (Word) files. The problem with kMDItemDisplayName is that if there is a .doc file for which the filename extension is hidden, then *.doc will not find that file because the ".doc" is not "displayed". As such, I think filename searches should be created that have as criteria: kMDItemDisplayName = *.doc || kMDItemFSName = *.doc. The bad news is that while kMDItemFSName searches will find all those .doc files with their filename extensions hidden, searching on the "FSName" takes a lot longer than DisplayName-only searches. You ought to search on both, and not just FSName, because some users will not realize that, for example, a saved search actually has an extension of .savedSearch - it's normally hidden. Anyway, this is definitely a good direction to go and warrants further development.

[Version 0.1]

SoCalMtnBiker reviewed on 30 Jan 2006

Works as advertised. A complete interface and not a front end to Spotlight. Nice that the default is File Name, since I think that's one of the more irritating features of Spotlight--defaults to contents without that being obvious.

I gave it a 4 for features, because I didn't see a "Show File in Finder." If it's there (meaning maybe I haven't seen it yet), I'd give it a five.

Pay attention to adding asterisks.

It's nice to see Matt sharing his vast knowledge of AppleScript. The book is great, but useful apps are nice to have.

[Version 0.1]

1 Reply

+19

Billy the Biker replied on 06 Mar 2006

socalmtnbiker,
This from the help:
To reveal a file in the Finder, double-click that match in the dialog. To reveal multiple files in the Finder, select them in the dialog and press Return.
MNssbiker

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