15 years into iMac, with a beginner's question. Gosh

[muvuth]

Hi everyone,

It feels weird to ask, but I have never had trouble with this until I purchased an iMac and installed Mojave.
I don't understand how the "search" function (the magnifier icon at the top right) works on the newer systems. On my previous Mac (Snow Leopard) it was pretty much straight forward, but now it seems to be useless and I don't understand what settings I should change.

See screenshots.

- The one with red digits (1 and 2) shows how I'm in the system settings and search for a function to stop the annoying bouncing of app icons when they have notifications. Solved that with Terminal, by the way. But you can see I was looking for "bounce", it says that it's in Dock (fair enough), but then Dock doesn't have that.

- The one with yellow digits is more important: I was searching for images I had just uploaded from an external digital camera, but they didn't appear. However, after searching deeper manually, I found them. The two Finder windows in the screenshot were simultaneously open. I can assume that the search function doesn't check inside packages contents (in this case it was Photos), OK, but how could I avoid that limit?

Could someone help me understand how to use this function? Because as it is now it makes no sense to me.

Thanks in advance!

 

[hobowankenobi]

For the first search: "bounce" is not found, as Apple calls it "Animate".

so...bounce won't get you there.

For the second search...hard to say. Could it be the search criteria? Does anything change if you select "This Mac"?

You might consider rebuilding the spotlight index. Can take a while, but won't hurt to try it. You might also check your Spotlight preferences in the System Preferences pane.

 

[muvuth]

For the first search: "bounce" is not found, as Apple calls it "Animate".

Fair enough. But still, why would it highlight "Dock" when there's nothing near the term I was searching?

You might consider rebuilding the spotlight index. Can take a while, but won't hurt to try it. You might also check your Spotlight preferences in the System Preferences pane.

I never tried the first solution, but I'll look that up.
I'll also check the System Preferences.

Thanks for the hints

 

[brianmowrey]

if you “just“ imported stuff from a camera/ external drive, it will not appear in spotlight or finder search for a day or so, as both operate on virtual indexes that take a while to catch up with imported directories. Spotlight buffering has been the norm since Lion as far as I remember, and probably before - but maybe Snow Leopard populated file names into the Spotlight index instantly, idk

 

[Juicy Box]

It feels weird to ask,

I don't think it is weird to ask. Apple's SW and UI isn't as intuitive as it used to be.

I have been using Macs for almost 30 years, and using OSX since its launch, but I have to look up how to do things on Mac and iOS a lot more now than I ever had before.

 

[AppleSmack]

The Finder's "find" function is ironically named, because it's terrible at actually finding anything - it rarely returns results even in folders where you'd think it couldn't possibly fail.

Try Easy Find and never look back!

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

 

[MacBH928]

You can also use Find Any File.

You see where it says "Mac Mojave" in the finder window in your screenshot? See where it says "This Mac" , if you click on that it should search all of your Mac. I think the finder is set to default search the current folder you have open.

 

[Fishrrman]

For a "better search tool", download EasyFind (it's free):

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

 

[muvuth]

if you “just“ imported stuff from a camera/ external drive, it will not appear in spotlight or finder search for a day or so, as both operate on virtual indexes that take a while to catch up with imported directories. Spotlight buffering has been the norm since Lion as far as I remember, and probably before - but maybe Snow Leopard populated file names into the Spotlight index instantly, idk

Ah, that makes sense, thank you

 

[muvuth]

You can also use Find Any File.

You see where it says "Mac Mojave" in the finder window in your screenshot? See where it says "This Mac" , if you click on that it should search all of your Mac. I think the finder is set to default search the current folder you have open.

I tried both, until I noticed that the files were under "Mac Mojave" and gave up. But that's a good reminder, as I often forget to change tell it where to search and I get frustrated for my own mistake...

 

[muvuth]

I don't think it is weird to ask. Apple's SW and UI isn't as intuitive as it used to be.

I have been using Macs for almost 30 years, and using OSX since its launch, but I have to look up how to do things on Mac and iOS a lot more now than I ever had before.

That's reassuring, thanks for pointing that out.
I feel it's getting somewhat worse, especially when comparing pre- and after-iPhone. It used to be a great machine, whereas now it feels more like an "extra" to complement mobile devices, if not a non-portable mobile device. (To be fair, I heard similar complaints when they moved from IBM to Intel, although I never tried Macs before MacOSX so I can't really tell.)

 

[MacPeasant123]

I'll cast a third vote in support of EasyFind. Half the time Spotlight returns hundreds of results that's frustrating to scroll through. EasyFind rarely does that, and even when it does, its results are much easier to sift through to find what I'm looking for.

DEVONtechnologies | Needful Things

A little collection of free utilities for the Mac to make your life easier.

www.devontechnologies.com

 

[hirsthirst]

I don't think it is weird to ask. Apple's SW and UI isn't as intuitive as it used to be.

I have been using Macs for almost 30 years, and using OSX since its launch, but I have to look up how to do things on Mac and iOS a lot more now than I ever had before.

... but also does quite a bit more too. I appreciate increased functionality ideally shouldn't come at the cost of intuitiveness, but it's got to be increasingly hard to keep it as clean & simple.

 

[Juicy Box]

... but also does quite a bit more too. I appreciate increased functionality ideally shouldn't come at the cost of intuitiveness, but it's got to be increasingly hard to keep it as clean & simple.

I don't know about that.

I think MS Windows, while doing a lot more than it used to, has gotten a lot more intuitive than it used to be.

Why can MS do it, but Apple is struggling.