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76 Comments
- Anpheus, on 10/12/2007, -12/+63Yes. Buy a network card. It has a MAC.
- avatarpalin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+40Tip
Here are two searches that save me daily.
date:today
date:yesterday
if you can't remember the filename or exacttly what is inside the file that can bring it up (movie for instance) then chances are you either opened it 'today' or 'yesterday'. You can also to 'this week' or 'last week' and so on.. - aogail, on 10/12/2007, -10/+47Maybe if you didn't write "Mac" as "MAC" you wouldn't have been dugg down.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -21/+52stupid
- gravis86, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27Call me stupid, but I never knew these existed. When you've got a 1.5TB hard drive like me, they can be really useful.
- econoar, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20Kevin and Alex quickly mentioned this on Diggnation #80 this week if you guys were furthur interested.
- Rice, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18You're not stupid. Apple's plan on getting rid of hierarchies for (personal) storage has so far been a failure... it might have something to do with the fact their default file system is the Hierarchical File System. :P
ZFS!
I've wanted to find a use for Smart Folders... but I just can't. - wild, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Yea, these things rock. Until your girlfriend figures out how they work and makes a smart folder for "movies". Then, it doesn't matter that you have an innocuous folder called "college thesis research" your porn is hiding in.
- breezy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17Thanks to google and the use of their new macFUSE project one of their developers has actually developed a spotlight filesystem (spotlightFS).
"SpotlightFS is a MacFUSE file system that creates true smart folders, where the folders' contents are dynamically generated by querying Spotlight. This differs from Finder's version of smart folders, which are really plist files with a ".savedSearch" file extension. Since SpotlightFS smart folders are true folders, they can be used from anywhere—including the command line!"
More info here
http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2007/01/spotlight-file-system-for-macfuse.html - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13I use them to sort out file types, and keep track of files that I want to delete. It sounds stupid, but I have a folder for torrents. Chances are there's torrent files being saved somewhere and the smart folder keeps track of them...then I delete them.
- smhill, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Slow day at digg apparently.
That "article" is pretty lame. Limited description and information and almost half it is straight from Apple's site.
If you want to know more just go to Help in the finder and search for "smart folder" you will get detailed information.
Basically in the finder hit Cmd+F, do your search and save it. - mozzep, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12That article is terrible. I hate how people think you can write 3 paragraphs on a topic that could be explained further and then ask all of us to read their half assed effort.
- raldz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14why am I being dugg down for asking a question?... I really am a Linux user who is planning on buying a Mac... right now it's on my wish list..
- wastern, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8>>smart folders = organized folders.
1. be organized and no search engine or technology has to be smart for you. Give that old noggin some exercise, you'll be glad you did.
While I don't think 'physical' folders will ever go away and I agree some degree of sorting out data in real folders is needed, searching does make things go faster. For instance, I want file X that is 10 folders deep in my drive. I could either open all those files up, and hope I remember where I put it (which can be an issue even with a decent system), or I could just type X in Spotlight and have my file in front of me in less then a second - wild, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"Yes, you're right. apple users can be real pains in the ass.. ask any independant osx developer of the kind of ***** they take from their users."
It is called high standards. I know a couple independent devs, and they love and hate their audience because they cant get away with anything. WHich is frustrating when you dump your heart and soul into something, but rewarding when it makes your work that much better. - ThinkFr33ly, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10No idea, but Windows Vista calls these "Search Folders". (Sometimes called Virtual Folders.)
- cookiebearo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8this article says nothing much more than "smart folders exist" and suggesting you look for information elsewhere -- not too useful, really
at least it looks like econoar submits stuff from other sites, but he's really just trying to get some adsense revenue from his blog
write something useful and maybe i'll come back for a second look - haxxorfreak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7ahh, but that's why you put your "College Thesis Research" in "Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations:" under the Privacy tab in the Spotlight System Preference panel. Of course I've never done this myself but theoretically it should work ;)
- benliong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5From what I can tell, while it's amazing that FUSE is ported to the Mac OS X platform, the only benefit of using spotlight with mac Fuse is so that you get those smart folders even in the terminals, and those are accessible by programs using simple File I/O.
It's still great that google does this for the open-source community. I also love the fact that mac version of FUSE can use most of the plugins for the linux FUSE. - winterblink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Well, as the article mentions (briefly), these are updated in real-time, you don't have to manage moving items you feel meet the criteria into them. To use an example, it's like the Smart Folders in other Apple apps, like iTunes and iPhoto. It's easy to tag your holiday photos with "Christmas", then create a Smart Folder that shows all files with that tag, and maybe between 1 Jan 2006 and 31 December 2006. Shazam, you've got a folder for this year's holiday stuff. Why? Maybe you've got some project you'd like to use them for.
Same thing here. The average joe might not need it, but if you do some repetetive tasks with files that are all around you drive(s), this lets you amalgamate the results, and still let you use the files normally. There's a *staggering* number of criteria you can use as well, right down to the most granular metadata you can imagine. Like specific white balance settings of photos you take with your camera, for instance.
Hope that helps. - cosmotic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It's a sad day when some one can copy and paste a snippet from the documentation and get on the front page of digg.
- JRPereira, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Wow, that's amazing. I've been looking towards switching to a mac for a while now and every time I see something like this I get more and more excited about it. All that's left is for me to save enough money to get one.
(warning: I may be easy to please - every time I see a friend of mine use the expose feature on his macbook, I'm thinking "that's awesome"). - raldz, on 10/12/2007, -20/+23I wish I have a MAC... any Linux counterpart?
- Morky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You can save a Nautilus search in Gnome. slocate is also good for quick searches, but is by filename only.
- winterblink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3These are great. One that I tend to use is to find large files on my drive that I might want to archive to an external drive instead of filling up my drive. You can just set a smart folder criteria to show files greater than whatever amount of bytes, and boom, done. Drag, drop, delete the contents at your leisure.
It's worth noting that these are basically just saved Finder queries, so you can do ad-hoc stuff like this extremely quickly with the Finder search control (note: not Spotlight, I'm talking about the entry field at the top right of the Finder window). Smart Folders just let you save these for later use. - PsychoPNut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sounds like macs are pretty smart...(no pun intended)...I use Windows and am looking forward to one day owning a Mac.
- digginestdogg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3schroduggity: "smart folders for dumb people."
Darn it Mr. Ballmer, stop lurking in the Mac Diggs and crack the whip over the Vista team again.
I think they might be slacking. - jimlau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I use Smart Folders with Mail in conjunction with several filing rules. That way, when family e-mails are routed to the family folder, business e-mails are routed to business, receipts, etc, I have a smart folder for "Last 7 Days" so I only have to check there to see what's new and current, be it personal, business, whatever. This saves having to check each folder with new messages separately, although that's still an option. An "unread" folder can also be useful for roughly the same thing, but I like the bit of context that looking at "Last 7 Days" gives me.
- Zero2aHero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I love the idea of smart folders, I simply haven't found much use for them yet. The one use I thought of I had to do some researching to make it work. When I record music on my pc my audio files sometimes end up scattered all over the place so on my Mac I made a smart folder for all of my music projects in case I save them in a weird spot while not paying attention.
I use Reason and Garageband, so I wanted to make a smart folder that said find garage band files or reason files... by default it only lets you do AND searches and not OR searches... luckily I was able to dig up how to do this using a raw query.
I was hoping people would post some of their favorite smart folders in the comments section here, so this is mine... if you are a musician, here is a smart folder to grab your garageband files and reason files...
Set the raw query to this...
(kMDItemKind == "GarageBandProject") || (kMDItemDisplayName = '*.rns*'cd) - krakelohm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That is why you give your girlfriend her own USER account. :D
- Weaselboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thx avatarpalin>> Did not know these tips.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I love my mac pro, but lack of one feature is killing me. SHARING FOLDERS. Why can't I share any folder I want with anyone else. Apple says its a security feature. I say its BS. For me, its taking a step backwards. Is there a 3rd party app that allows me to share my folders?
- ultmast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@haxxorfreak
The problem is that she can look in the preferences and see what folders you've chosen not to index. It almost makes it easier on her to nail you.
Just use Disk Utility and put all your "research" into a password protected disk image. Just name it something very 2001, and you can always claim you forgot the password.
Being a disk image, you can even back it up easily, if need be. - HonoredMule, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1People who ACTUALLY keep their computers organized would have no use for this whatsoever. easy to find != organized, but organized => easy to find
- coldfusion1970, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Great feature that i keep forgetting to use.
- mrdirkdiggler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This article is half copied and pasted from the help page on Apple's site. It's also pretty obvious... why all the diggage?
- indiekiduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use smartfolders for my email and so I no longer need to drag emails into folders which is great. But after seeing this article I made a finder smart folder for all my photoshop documents and that was pretty handy since I have alot of them all over the place. But I can't really think of any other smart folders to make.
- jals, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love this idea, it's like a dynamic playlist in your music software, except for everything. Are there any applications that would provide the same abilities in Windows XP?
- mozzep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You would start by going to System Preferences > Sharing > [start] Windows Sharing.
Then on the PC, I don't know the exact procedure, but you need find some kind of "Connect to a network" setting. Then enter the local IP of the mac computer on the network. That should be about it. You might need to preface this with "smb://". It's really pretty easy...
Or just google it. - smhill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@bariswheel
"be organized and no search engine or technology has to be smart for you. Give that old noggin some exercise, you'll be glad you did."
Yes and no. While I agree, organization is important from the get go, it is also good to look at this as another tool for organization.
I use them quite often. Mostly for cross referencing without creating alias. I do many projects for many clients in different categories. Generally I organize my folders by client name>project. Using spotlight comments and smart folders I can easily and automatically create groupings by type. For instance, I have a Smart Folder called "Illustration". Inside is all my projects flagged as illustration regardless of what client folder they are in. And so on for other categories. I also have them for priority and other things of that nature. - aserer511, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's a pretty neat feature, but I'll live very much in the 'stone age' with XP, thank you...
- Naga10, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You're exactly right!
Ever since I got my Mac, I've been looking for a way to do this. My father wants access to all my music on his other computers (that can't run iTunes), and I have NO clue how to share just that one folder. - johntooker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks for that tip. I was trying to figure out a way to get Logic, Reason, Live, Melodyne, and Pro Tools files in one smart folder and that sure did it.
- jsusanka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1these folders are nice - gnome has had them for years and I find them very useful
- chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't find them too useful - I pretty much have about 10 folders I sort things into and then use Spotlight to open any file I need.
- Guard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes... iTunes provides the same thing in Windows XP, but only for music. Smart Playlists. :p
But Windows XP doesn't have Smart Folders and i haven't heard of any applications providing them. I didn't even realize Vista had them till I read the comments here. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks runeasgar!
- geoken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Yes and no. While I agree, organization is important from the get go, it is also good to look at this as another tool for organization."
Exactly. There are many different scenerios under which you would want to view a group of files. It helps to build your directory structure based off of the most common scenerio, but it's a pretty good feature to be able to ignore the directory structure and use a totally different one when the situation warrants it. - DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Apple has been toying with this idea well before Microsoft even thought of working on Vista.
Smart Folders were to be included in Copland, Apple's failed OS, somewhere in the beginning of the 90s.
Most of Spotlight's tech seems to originate from Apple's v-twin search engine, also dating back to 1990 and even before. - flashboy131, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Another one is, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop/Indesign Documents > 100mb helps me reduce file size or archive off the HD.
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