Stop looking, start finding.

Spotlight is the lightning-fast search technology built into Mac OS X that makes it easy to find what you’re looking for, even if you don’t know where to look. Conveniently available in the Mac OS X menu bar, the Spotlight search field gives you instant results as you start typing, encompassing not only files, folders and documents but also messages in Mail, contacts in Address Book, iCal calendars, items in System Preferences, applications and even dictionary definitions. Spotlight searches aren’t confined to your computer — you can also search other computers on the network.

The need for speed.

Built into the core of Mac OS X, Spotlight delivers results so quickly because it indexes files on your computer in the background, so you never experience lag times or slowdowns. And when you make a change, such as adding a new file, email or contact, Spotlight updates its index automatically, so search results are always up-to-the-moment accurate.

Searching with smarts.

When you search with 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 document types, including Microsoft Word documents, Adobe Photoshop images and email, 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. When you click the document, you are immediately taken to that spot in the document with the search terms highlighted.