Change finder search default (filename not content)?

In Leopard, when one types into the search field of a Finder window, the window changes to search "This Mac" on "Content."
That is never, ever what I want it to do!
What I always want it to do is, search folder I had selected, on FILENAME. In other words, two extra mouse-clicks to make the search -- click the folder-name instead of "this mac" and click "filename" instead of "Content."
Is there any way to persuade the Finder to make selected-object/filename the default for searches?
P.S. this does not refer to anything in Spotlight preferences or in Finder Preferences that I can find.

You can get it down to one mouse click if you open the folder you want to search, then use the key combo of Command-Shift-F to bring up a search window. You still have to click the name of your location to get out of the idiotic default of This Mac, but at least you are in Name contains:___ and can immediately type the file name in the space.
Be sure to send feedback to Apple:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html/
If enough people raise enough Cain we may get a return to sanity in the Spotlight GUI. Worked for Stacks in the Dock, where Leopard originally had less functionality than Tiger.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Similar Messages

Change the Finder search default to Find by Name (search by file name) rather than Find by Content

I just discovered another way to set the finder Find option to default to "find by name" (search by file name). I'm using Mac OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion. I'm not sure if this works on other OS versions, but it probably does.
Here's a step by step:
#1: Open System Preferences
#2: Click on "Keyboard"
#3: Click on "Keyboard Shortcuts"
#4: Click on "Application Shortcuts" (on my system this was the last item located on the left-hand side window)
#5: Click the little "+" right below the right-hand side window
#6: Click on the "Application" menu and choose "finder.app"
#7: Click into the field "Menu Title:" and type "Find by Name..." (Type it exactly like that including the three dots. Don't type the quotes BTW.)
#8: Click into the field "Keyboard Shortcut:" and press the command-key and F at the same time. It should look like this ⌘F
#9: Close System Preferences
That's it. Basically what you are doing is remapping the command-F key (⌘F) to "Find By Name".
I tried to post this to other previous discussions asking this same question, but they were all locked.

Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions. These are mostly user to user discussions.
Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.
Feedback

10.4.4 Find by File Name, NOT CONTENTS !

I HATE Find by Contents that Spotlight does. It's like Google giving 1,000,000 completely irrelevant articles. What a Brain Damaged idea to make as THE DEFAULT. Arrrgghh.
Can you imagine a room full of people, and you say "Charlie?" and everyone answers "Yes" because they know of Charlie? YOU CAN"T HEAR CHARLIE ANSWER !!!
I only ever search by contents of files perhaps ONCE PER YEAR.
Is there an Easy Way to just search by name?

Just to add a bit to MacOSXHints article:
If you installed Developer Tools you can use Property List Editor to make your changes to the default_smart.plist file.
Also, you can avoid the spinning beach ball when you type if you first put the search window into list view (command-2). You can also have this come up as the default view with another edit to the plist--Add a ViewOptions Sibling after the Version key, containing a Child of ViewStyle with the class String, value of Nlsv. I put the version of the plist that I use HERE. Be sure to work on a copy and to save the original! Also make sure your permissions are correct after you finish, and remember to relaunch the Finder.
The only remaining problem is that there is no way Tobias Welti and I could discover to eliminate the Search field altogether, nor to have the cursor appear in Name:Contains instead as the default.
Francine
Schwieder

Webui- Change address search default for new Activity Email

Hi Folks,
In Webui, under "Activities" when I select option to create email, there is a "To" button (in red circle below) that allows to search for email address. Please see screenshot. Right now there are two choices available. All I want to do is make the choice in second row "CRM Addresses" to come up in first row as default. I tried using AET and component workbench but that field is not modifiable. Any suggestions how I can accomplish that. Is it config or part of code?
Thanks in advance

that TO button doesn't have any server event. it used java script to raise that popup. so we need to know what is happening in the java script. you can observe the code in .htm page of that view.
we can control the values that appear in the drop down in the configuration ONE TO ONE email settings->Define Multipart E-Mail Option and Groupware Integration
if we choose none in the first option, then only CRM addresses option will be shown in the dropdown. for you it is not the requirement i guess, you need to show both options but in some order.
however i have no idea, how to sort them. may be you can use this as starting point.

Finder search results show MP3s with incomplete or changed filenames in Yosemite

Under Yosemite, when performing a search for "mp3" in Finder, certain search results will not display their true filename under the "Name" column:
For example, the "Name" column above should display the entire filename (as shown in the Status Bar), not just what I can only assume is the track title.
This does not apply to all mp3s, only to some. Probably something to do with ID3 tags, or perhaps with certain hyphen usage in the filename.
Anyway, I'd just like the "Name" column to show me the filename as it should, and not metadata. I can't find how to change the results to display the correct filenames.
This causes several problems. First it makes sorting by an album's track number, which is frequently included in the actual filename, in the search results impossible, as now the numbers are not part of the list. Therefore if I want to drag an album into an iTunes Playlist in the correct album order I have to go to the source folder and can't do it straight from the search window. Also I can't see separate versions of the same song, which may have the same track title but different filenames. Also I can't see the filename at a glance, which may include other important information other than the track title. And so on.
I can't find anyone else who has this problem on Yosemite. Mavericks yes... and sadly no help. Hoping it's fixable.

I have the same problem with AIFF's too...
It's a big problem for me as I'm currently doing some sound design.
I need to see the file name in the finder, not the title/track name.

My yahoo search defaults to netherlands not england can it be changed?

hi, everytime i set my search engine to yahoo then search i get results from the netherlands, how do i change to england?
thanks

Hi ,
According to your description, my understanding is that your My Site search default redirect to
conversationresults.aspx page when you try to search.
For your issue, please take steps as below:
Go to your My Site -> Site Settings ->Search Settings.
In the Configure Search Navigation, make sure the first navigation is Everything and the its URL is /SearchCenter/Pages/result.aspx.
Thanks,
Eric
Forum Support
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support,
contact [email protected]
Eric Tao
TechNet Community Support

How can i optimize my SEARCH ENGINE???I use godaddy.i contact them and they give me this conclusion:Search engines are not pulling up your other pages on your website because it is created with javascript. the content on the pages, (photo gallery.....

conclusion from godaddy:
Search engines are not pulling up your other pages on your website because it is created with javascript.
the content on the pages, (photo gallery, My Recipes/Blog, History, Friends) need to be formatted to HTML, PHP or CSS. No search engines (google, Yahoo, Bing) can crawl//analyze webpages built with javascript.
See if Apple allows iweb to create the pages in HTML format and ask how to make those changes.
I spend more then 1 hour on the phone with them but we didn't find the solution...
please i need help because like this nobody can rich my website...
www.chefdiego.com
thank you

The part of iWeb pages that give the search engines problem is the navbar. That's javascript based. One way to get around that is to create another blank page in the site that's not included in the navbar.
Add a text based navbar in that page with just the other pages in the site.
Also you can use that page for creating the sitemap for Google at Create your Google Sitemap Online - XML Sitemaps Generator.
Have you let Google know your site exists? This website describes how to get it recognized: Get your iWeb website found in search engines like Google Yahoo MSN and Bing.
OT

Finder search - change to name search?

When I type a search term into a Finder search window, I sometimes get a little pop-up menu that says "Filenames" underneath. If I don't select it, it seems like it's doing a Spotlight search, showing everything (metadata & contents) that have the search term. But after it's done a search, there's no way to select that little "Filename" option unless I delete a character or start typing again.
How do I have the Finder always default to searching the filename?

Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions. These are mostly user to user discussions.
Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.
Feedback

How do I apply special effects to a track when I keep getting error message that "Could not find layout Default Reverb GB"?

How do I apply special effects to a track in GarageBand when I keep getting error message that says"Could not find layout Default Reverb GB"?

I go to Applications to see if
GarageBand has changed and dthere is no change, still 1.42GB of file size ‹
no evidence of the 10+ GB that the installer told me I was downloading, no
evidence in my download folder that I downloded anything, and most
important, when I click on ³Effects² I¹m back to the same error message.
I¹ve been at this now for about 3 hours.
Downloading the extra content will take a very long time.
When the download has finished, the prompt for the password will appear and the installer will continue to run in the background.
Let t run. As long as GarageBand is still installing, it will give a warning, when you try to quit.
When you can quit GarageBand without a warning, restart your Mac.
The size of the GarageBand application will not change, but you should be seeing more loops. They are installed in the System Library, and the folder "Library" on your Macintosh HD should by now be 10GB larger.

Default starting point for a search? Stopping a Finder Search?

"Command F" brings up a search window, defaulted to "This Mac". All too often, I forget to switch the search to my intended target before entering the search criteria. I've got several TB of storage on line, so a "This Mac" Search can take a l-o-n-g time. I can't find a way to stop this search once it's started. Is there a way to set a preference for Find to default to the selected item (disk, folder, or whatever) rather than the whole computer? Am I missing a "cancel" button somewhere?
Peri

Backspacing or deleting the search criteria does not work. Once the beach-ball cursor starts spinning, nothing I do has any effect until the search is complete - which may be several minutes.
On 10.4, there was is an "x" at the lower righthand corner of the search window (next to the search indicator), which would cancel the search. There is no "x" on 10.5.
Saving a search might be an answer if I repeated the same search frequently, but I don't. Also, I'd have to remember to use the sidebar. If I could remember that, I'd probably could also remember to change the starting point for the search.

I opened my computer and the whole top only shows web search, I can not find my bookmarks and I tried reloading firefox and still nothing but tab bar

Question
I opened my computer and the whole top only shows web search, I can not find my bookmarks and I tried reloading firefox and still nothing but tab bar. Tried f10, alt, nothing! Can I reload an old firefox? There is no firefox logo at top. When I rt click at top I see hide toolbar and leave full screen. To the right there is only a home sign. How can I get my BOOKMARKS ??????? I so need them and hate what ever this is that now shows up on firefox.

The Reset Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your essential information.
Note: ''This will cause you to lose any Extensions, Open websites, and some Preferences.''
To Reset Firefox do the following:
#Go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information.
#Click the "Reset Firefox" button.
#Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
#Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.
Further information can be found in the [[Reset Firefox – easily fix most problems]] article.
Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

Can you use Find/Change to search for many different words at once?

I have an 80 page catalogue in Indesign (CS5) - it has several thousands of catalogue numbers listed as text within it. I've just been given a list of 1000 catalogue numbers to search for and if they appear, remove them - is there any way to search for them all in one go, rather than one by one?
I've started using Find/Change to search for the catalogue numbers but seem to only be able to search one catalogue number at a time that way.
Any ideas welcome!
Thanks

GREP can search for more than one phrase "at once" (i.e., in one operation), like this:
word1|word2|word3
-- the pipe | delimits the separate words. Then again, GREP Is Not Magic™. This --
... a list of 1000 catalogue numbers to search for ...
is a bit too much to copy-and-paste into the single Find What line. There is a limit of ten or twelve (or something) OR phrases you can use in GREP.
On the other hand: GREP is great at finding numbers. If all of your catalogue numbers obey some basic rule, for instance "all of them consist of 6 digits and there are no other numbers with exactly 6 digits", well, that we can probably work with.

Search / Find problem with Mac Notes

The 'command f' function is greyed out on my new version of 'Mac Notes' that comes with Lion. As per the image below. why can't i use that 'Find' function?
There is another search function in Notes
but this just does a broad brush search to see if any of my notes contain a word and identifes the title of the notes but it doesn't identify where the words are within the note. i have some notes with thousands of words so this isn't very helpful.
does anyone know how i can use the traditional 'Find' function in Notes? or perhaps some free software that i can use instead of notes?
why they changed it i don't know? i've been using mac for 13 years and some things are just getting less useful and intuitive.
Thanks
Shane

I agree. Still no resolution to this problem and the integration of icloud makes looking at alternatives less appealing.

"File, Find, Searching "This Mac" or "New Finder Window" not finding files ?

I an iMac 7,1, Mac OS X 10.6.8, Build 10K549,
I have noticed on many occasions recently that when I ma using either ...
File, Find, Searching "This Mac"
or
"New Finder Window"
I am NOT finding the files I am looking for ...
I now they are there, so I go through all my folders, and find the files, or folders I am looking for ...
So why could this be happening, why are they not found in the search ?
Is there a fix or addition ?

As baltwo eventually explained, you have to add the search criteria "System files" to your search, with the option "Include" selected, to find many items Spotlight otherwise excludes from search results. Alternately (& quite ridiculously), if your search is restricted to the parent folder containing the item, you don't need to add this.
For example, if you open /Library in the Finder, enter "Desktop Pictures" in the search box, you won't get it in the results with the default "This Mac" location, but if you click "Library" for the location, you will. (Yes, many users think this is bizarre, "what were they thinking?" behavior.)
What Spotlight considers "system files" is only slightly less bizarre, as you will probably discover once you start using it to broaden searches. For instance, Safari history items & Mail.app messages are not found unless you include system files, but many files like C Header Source files (in System/Library/Frameworks) are found without including system files in the search.
When it was introduced in Tiger, Spotlight was supposed to be a next-generation search engine, capable of accurately guessing what you were looking for (& filtering out what you weren't) with near-sentient intelligence. I think almost anyone who used that version will agree it did not achieve that lofty goal. Apple apparently agreed, or at least listened to the complaints enough to realize it needed rethinking. Unfortunately, what its designers came up with for the Leopard rethink feels like an early beta version, full of hastily implemented, quirky features that never got sorted out before it was released.
We can only hope that we won't have to wait for OS 10.6 for a more mature, less quirky version.

OS 10.9 Finder sidebar suddenly does not displaying proper contents

OS 10.9 Finder sidebar suddenly does not display most items; only shows couple items I don't even want there. Can change what shows in first finder window but sidebar not responding to "Preference" changes. Screen shot is what it shows now. I downloaded a Yahoo widget and their widget player app today, could that cause this?

I did force quite finder--> no effect.
Finder uaed to list in "sidebar" each of the main folders in HD i.e Documents, Pictues, Downloads, Movies, Applications...(I get same window contents open if click on HD icon as when clikc on Finder). Now none of that.
Just now went back into preferences and unchecked everything in sidebar section. If I check for it to just show HD then everuything does show up but several windows to the right and HD icon is all that shows in sidebar but only if I first then click on (in order across the open windows: Users then geoffreylevens1 (system name).
If recheck items they do NOT show up in sidebar. See attached
Message was edited by: GeoffreyLevens--attached image shows up fine pre-posting but what you see is what you get now. Worked yesterday.

Change finder search default (filename not content)?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for