Change the order of Spotlight search results
Written by Brent Sheets
Oct 16
The Spotlight feature in Mac OS X Leopard conveniently sorts search results by category. Spotlight does this so Mac users can immediately see what type objects were found. But did you know you could change the order in which the search results appear? Here’s how to optimize Spotlight for the way you work.
Go to and select . If you have the tab active, you’ll see the list of categories in the order they appear in Spotlight search results.
All Mac users have different needs but here’s what I did. I left all the Spotlight categories checked and moved the categories that I search most often to the top.
In my case, this meant I had to drag the Documents, PDF Documents, Folders and Images categories to the top. Now when I search with Spotlight, Mac OS X sorts the search results in the order most suited to how I work. You can see the sort order I use by clicking the image above.
Spotlight also has a keyboard shortcut that allows you to jump directly to the Spotlight search box. Just press Command+Space and you can start typing in the Spotlight search box instantly.
