Mac OSX Spotlight Enhancement

gistfile1.md

Mac OSX Spotlight Enhancement

Add this to Info.plist in /System/Library/Spotlight/RichText.mdimporter/Contents/ and Spotlight will search for source code files.

<string>public.c-header</string>
<string>public.c-plus-plus-header</string>
<string>public.c-source</string>
<string>public.objective-c-source</string>
<string>public.c-plus-plus-source</string>
<string>public.objective-c-plus-plus-source</string>
<string>com.sun.java-source</string>
<string>public.perl-script</string>
<string>public.python-script</string>
<string>public.csh-script</string>
<string>public.shell-script</string>
<string>public.ruby-script</string>
<string>public.php-script</string>
<string>com.netscape.javascript-source</string>
<string>net.daringfireball.markdown</string>

To find the entry for other file extensions do:

mdimport -n -d1 somefile.ext

After adding the desired file types you have to run

mdimport -r /System/Library/Spotlight/RichText.mdimporter

to update the new file extensions.

To re-index the HD you can run

sudo mdutil -E /

To implement an easy command to search via the Terminal using Spotlight install spotfind.sh from https://github.com/mattheworiordan/Mac-OS-X-Useful-Scripts

To add system folders to the search index use the script above and execute

spotfind -c

More Information

• Idea and code from: http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/terminal-commands-for-improving-spotlight.php
• Spotlight official documentation https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/MetadataIntro/MetadataIntro.html

Thanks ;)

Works in Yosemite. Thanks!

Thank you!

El Capitan seems to prohibit modification of that file

Yes Fil is correct. This is a no go on El Capitan. I even tried adding admin to permissions but I was locked out. Anyone have a workaround? I'd love to be able to index my .swift/.m files.

I had to turn off SIP to edit the file on El Capitan.
http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/05/disable-rootless-system-integrity-protection-mac-os-x/

Thanks, very useful.

Markdown to Spotlight

You can do this without disabling SIP by creating a copy of the system RichText.mdimporter, modifying its Info.plist and saving it in /Library/Spotlight.

1. cp -r /System/Library/Spotlight/RichText.mdimporter ~/
   (This copies the .mdimporter to the root of your user home directory)

2. You can either use an editor from the command line, or go to a Finder window in your Home folder and do a "Show Package Contents" on the RichText.mdimporter file bundle to get to the Info.plist file and open it with Text Edit or another Text Editor.
   Open the: RichText.mdimporter/Contents/Info.plist Markdown.mdimporter/Contents/Info.plist file and add:

<string>net.daringfireball.markdown</string>

to the array of LSItemContentTypes in that file:

3. Rename the RichText.mdimporter to Markdown.mdimporter:
   mv ~/RichText.mdimporter Markdown.mdimporter

4. Copy the new .mdimporter to /Library/Spotlight:
   sudo cp -R ~/Markdown.mdimporter /Library/Spotlight

5. Use the mdimport command to add it to the metadata indexing system:
   mdimport -r /Library/Spotlight/Markdown.mdimporter
   This command asks the server to reimport files for UTIs claimed by the listed plugin.

6. It should re-import the files automatically after the previous caommand, but if you wish, you can always re-index the whole drive to include the new filetype by rebuilding the whole Spotlight index:
   sudo mdutil -E /
   (This will take some time, and is rather resource demanding)

But now you should be good to go with .markdown files being indexed by Spotlight!