Stop looking. Start finding. With Spotlight, you can find anything on your computer as quickly as you type. Search your entire system from one place: Files, emails, contacts, images, calendars and applications appear instantly.

The Need for Speed

Spotlight for Mac OS X Tiger lets you blaze through your files and applications and see results as soon as you type the very first letter. That’s because Spotlight indexes files on your computer transparently and in the background, so you never experience lag times or slowdowns. And when you make a change, such as adding a new file, receiving an email or entering a new contact, Spotlight updates its index automatically, so search results are always up-to-the-moment accurate.

No Stone Unturned

With Spotlight, you always find what you’re looking for, even if you don’t know where to look. A permanent new fixture of Tiger’s menu bar, the convenient Spotlight search field gives you instant results encompassing not only files, folders and documents but also messages in Mail, contacts in Address Book, iCal calendars, System Preferences and applications. Spotlight even ensures that others only search for what they’re allowed to find. Files they shouldn’t see never appear in Spotlight search results, keeping your data safe from prying eyes.

Searching with Smarts

When you search via Spotlight, you’re actually accessing a comprehensive, constantly updated index that sees all the metadata inside supported files — the “what, when and who” of every piece of information saved on your Mac — including the kind of content, the author, edit history, format, size and many more details. Most documents, including Microsoft Word documents, Photoshop images and emails, already contain rich metadata. And because Spotlight indexes content as well, your search results include what appears inside a file or document, not just its title.

Looks Easy

With Spotlight, you find what you want with uncanny accuracy, even when you don’t know many details. For example, if you know roughly when you saved or received something, you can type in relative time periods like “Date:Yesterday” to find it. If you’re not sure of an item’s file format, use “kind” to find types of files including “Kind:Movie,” “Kind:Image” or “Kind:Document.” Spotlight displays a neatly sorted result list that you can browse to find what you want.

You can also use descriptive words to get amazingly targeted results, even across thousands of files. For example, to find everything from a colleague, type the person’s name. Spotlight returns documents she authored or edited, images she emailed, messages she wrote (and messages you sent to her) and her contact information. You see results in sorted categories for easy browsing, picking and clicking.

Organically Organized

Thanks to the speed and flexibility of Spotlight, you will discover countless new ways to organize your files. Take the results of a search and save it as a Smart Folder that automatically updates as you add or remove documents from your Mac. Smart Folders contain files grouped together based on search criteria instead of physical location, so the same file can appear in multiple Smart Folders without moving from its original saved location on your system. No need to duplicate, shift or update files: Spotlight Smart Folders keep everything organized for you.

Star Power

Spotlight illuminates every corner of your Mac, searching across the Finder, System Preferences and Mac OS X applications including Mail and Address Book. Perform a Spotlight Finder search that goes beyond mere filenames and location to scour content and metadata. Find the location of setting controls in System Preferences by running a Spotlight keyword search. Set up Smart Mailboxes according to Spotlight queries — email with specific contacts, email about a particular keyword — and Mail files away your messages automatically. Create Smart Groups in Address Book using Spotlight searches on card content including birthdays, anniversaries and location. Everything on your Mac gets a chance to shine.

Found and Found

Thanks to Spotlight and its range of supported formats, you can find anything on your Mac, from text hidden within a PDF document to an image shot with a particular camera. By putting this phenomenal search technology at your fingertips, Spotlight and Mac OS X will change how you find, organize and value the information saved on your computer.