I always found mac smart folders a little cumbersome and never used them much. But now I found one thing that could be very useful to me: to have a smart folder show me the latest Pro Tools documents sorted by last modified date. I set it to search my projects folder and use +/- on search words to include and exclude things. It works very nicely, but sometimes I save PT files to my desktop, and I can't find a way to have the smart folder include that or that drive. Any tips, or maybe a link to a smart folder tutorial?
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Smart folders basics
- Thread starter Ben J.
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Create or change a Smart Folder on Mac
In the Finder on your Mac, use Smart Folders to automatically find and organize files by type and subject matter.
support.apple.com
Maybe this will help...
Thanks for trying, but this is just a very simple overview, and it doesn't mention at all how to specify multiple search locations.
A Guide to Using Smart Folders on MacOS - The Productive Engineer
This guide teaches you in great detail what Smart Folders are and how to use them to create powerful saved searches based on a variety of criteria.
theproductiveengineer.net
go past the basic material at the beginning (scroll down) and there is a more exhaustive tutorial.
Thanks again. The article confirms what I was afraid of; there is no way to select more than one drive or folder for the smart folder search. Pretty lame, if you ask me.A Guide to Using Smart Folders on MacOS - The Productive Engineer
This guide teaches you in great detail what Smart Folders are and how to use them to create powerful saved searches based on a variety of criteria.
go past the basic material at the beginning (scroll down) and there is a more exhaustive tutorial.
Something to look into and try: does Desktop show in your Finder window? If not, from a Terminal:
I might be way off here, but I think that the folders hidden via the flags are omitted from Spotlight search. I know for sure hidden dot files are excluded (eg. ".somefilename").
Code:
chflags nohidden Desktop
mdutil -E /I might be way off here, but I think that the folders hidden via the flags are omitted from Spotlight search. I know for sure hidden dot files are excluded (eg. ".somefilename").
You're certainly way off. I know how to access hidden folder and such.
If I wasn't clear up to now; my issue is with selecting locations for the search in smart folders.
Anyway, I think it's just the way it is; you can't select more than one location for the smart folder search.
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1. Create your smart folder exactly as you want, but with one directory
2. Edit the smart folder file (xxx.savedSearch) using a decent text editor and add all other paths you want to the array under "FXScopeArrayOfPaths"
3. Force-restart Finder. (I use killall Finder in Terminal as that's where I run "vi" from to edit the search files.)
2. Edit the smart folder file (xxx.savedSearch) using a decent text editor and add all other paths you want to the array under "FXScopeArrayOfPaths"
3. Force-restart Finder. (I use killall Finder in Terminal as that's where I run "vi" from to edit the search files.)
Thank you so very much!
I followed your excellent directions and it worked perfectly.
This is exactly how you taylor your smart folders.
It really should be built-in.
Thanx again, Macrumors rule.
I get around that restriction using HoudahSpot. Uses the Spotlight index but is very configurable.