While Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.5 is greatly improved, there is one area in which it has regressed to an unusable state. Sort options in Leopard’s Spotlight are limited to only three fields: Name, Kind and Last Opened.
Uh… This is bad, guys…
Leopard's Spotlight Sort Options: Last Opened? Lame!
For most quickie finds I’ll usually turn to the Spotlight menubar item. And this usually gets the job done. But every now and then I need to create a more complex search, and for that I’ll typically turn to the “command-f” Finder method. Again, there are many useful advantages in Leopard over Tiger when it comes to this sort of search, most notably the nested search properties. These allow Spotlight in Leopard to create searches of Byzantine complexity. Astoundingly, the results will only be sortable by the aforementioned criteria. Need to look at your “Date Created” search by “Date Created?” Too bad. Guess you’re shit out of luck.
Smart folders never looked so dumb.
This has been posted about The Internets for some time now, mentioned recently in this fine MacOSXHints post, and now listed as one of that site’s author’s most glaring problems in Leopard. I must admit, I haven’t needed this functionality until recently — very late in Leopard’s release — which is why I’m only noticing it now. But boy, when you do need it, it’s shocking to discover this constraint in an otherwise greatly improved tool.
It kills me when a company takes one step forward and another back like this. I really hope Apple fixes this shortcoming sooner rather than later.
20 Comments
One thing that bugs me quite a bit is this search-as-you type feature of Spotlight.
Any way to turn this feature off?
I agree that that can be annoying. Unfortunately, I do not know of a way to disable that behavior. At least in 10.5 the speed is improved to the point where it’s not nearly as problematic.
-systemsboy
I just noticed this new behaviour of Spotlight in Leopard and went a little ballistic for a while. I mean, really, whiskey tango foxtrot?
THe other thang that pisses me off is Apple’s stupid copying of Microsoft and making the Finder (or LaunchServices, I don’t know nor care) pop up a stupid dialog asking me if I really want to open a file I just downloaded.
Yes, you idiot machine, I do.
I’ve been a system and network admin for 20 years, and all those dialogs do on Windows is train people to answer in the affirmative to things like “this program needs to install a virus on your computer… is that OK?” Having the Mac do the same thing just bakes my biscuit.
Any way to turn that off?
Peter,
Yeah, I agree that these messages are getting a bit annoying. Been starting to wonder if there’s a way to turn them off myself. So what better time than now to figure it out?
After a quick look around The Internets, it turns out that it is indeed possible. There are two approaches. One involves Folder Actions and Applescript and doesn’t sound very elegant. The other involves the creation of a plist file. This second option sounds promising, but most of the sites I’ve seen that talk about it don’t do a very good job of explaining things. This is a pretty meaty topic, so I’m going to go ahead and do a full post on it. Until then, try this:
Break Apple Quarantine
That should do what you’re looking for. It will stop the system from confirming that you want to open any and all items, no matter what kind they are.
Check back soon for a full writeup on how this all works. (Assuming, of course, that it does. I have not actually tried it yet.)
Good luck! And thanks for the topic!
-systemsboy
Alas, I tried it, and I still get:
“KPSaver.zip” may be an application. It was
downloaded from the Internet and will be opened
by The Unarchiver. Are you sure you want to open
it?
Camino.app downloaded this file on 2008-11-03 from
doomlaser.com.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Aw crap. Okay. I’m working on the article today. Hopefully I can figure something out.
Thanks for letting me know.
-systemsboy
Looks like it’s doing it because Camino is adding a higher prioeity quarantine:
xattr -l /Users/peter/Desktop/Downloads/iChm.1.4.zip
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms[...]
com.apple.quarantine: 0000;4919b2df;Camino.app;B2C947EB-B33E-4985-A2C9-3FA84EC0BD75|org.mozilla.camino
Razzafrazzing caniglioon goldarn muttergrumble ….
And using http://henrik.nyh.se/2007/10/lift-the-leopard-download-quarantine doesn’t seem to do the trick.
Well, it does, if you modify it:
do shell script “touch ” & (addedItems as text) & “; xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ” & (addedItems as text) & “; sleep 5; xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ” & (addedItems as text) & ” &”
You don’t actually need the “touch” step, I added that to force the “last modify” date to be the download date for the copy of the file, because otherwise Safari sets the last mod date to the create date as reported by the webserver… which is just daft.
Peter,
I have the preference file method working. I copied the plist info from here:
http://pseudogreen.org/blog/yes_leopard_i_want_to_open_it_already.html
I actually already had a file called com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist in my ~/Library/Preferences folder, so I added the properties listed in the above article. I had to quit the Finder to get it to work. And, of course, it will only work on newly downloaded files. But it does work for me.
Also, I noticed that looking at new downloads with xattr will still yield a quarantine attribute, but that attribute should now be set to “Neutral,” thus allowing you to open the file. That’s how it’s been working for me anyway.
Maybe you want to give it another shot. Let me know if you get it working.
Full writeup still to come…
-systemsboy
I used the same prefs file. I restarted Finder, logged out, end rebooted, and it didn’t make a difference. Even on newly downloaded files. It’s possible Camino is writing its own Quarantine attribute in there. In fact that’s what’s happening.
I’ve filed a bug report with mozilla.org.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=464333
Huh, that’s weird. I’ve tried this on two machines now. With the preference loaded, Camino launches with no warning. If I then unload the preference and restart the Finder, Camino launches with the warning. Not sure what’s happening on your machine.
Weird.
-systemsboy
Um, Camino launching isn’t the problem, it’s the files downloaded by Camino that are the problem.
And if you have a look at the bug I filed, the “gentlemen” doing Camino have closed it as “won’t fix”.
Ah! Got it. Thanks for the clarification.
Hmph! Guess that’s one more reason to use Firefox.
-systemsboy
Don’t bet on Firefox not following Camino’s lead here. It’s not quite the same group of people, but in a lot of ways Camino is the “Mac UI testbed” for Firefox.
After reading the bug report comments, like, eighty times, I’m still unclear how Apple is “opting Camino in” to quarantine support. From that comment it sounds like Apple is forcing Camino — but not Safari or Firefox or any other app to my knowledge — to apply the “Unsafe” flag to downloads. I don’t buy it.
Using com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist works for Firefox at least, and I’m guessing for other browsers as well (though admittedly I have only tried FF). I would doubt that Firefox is even consulting the plist file, so it’s not like they (or anyone else) need to “hand-roll” support for the preference. They just need to stop actively overriding it with their own attributes. If this is something that can be handled by the OS, why is Camino going its own way at all? For Safari-like “Safe Downloads?” Blech! It’s a bit annoying that they’re going to such lengths for a feature that I doubt most people even care about, and providing no way to defeat it for those who do care.
I’d badmouth Camino a bit at this point, but those guys seem pretty pissed off already, so…
Whatever…
-systemsboy
I understand what they were saying, and I opened up a new bug as an “enhancement”, and after a couple more exchanges they’ve caught on to the situation and have re-opened the bug.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=464575
Brilliant! You, sir, have the patience of a saint and the tenacity of a terrier.
Well done.
-systemsboy
Back to Spotlight, have you looked at a utility “SpotInside”?
http://www.oneriver.jp/SpotInside/index_e.html
Nope, hadn’t heard of that. Pretty cool!
-systemsboy