Is there any way to make Mac OS X Spotlight only index the file names and not the contents?

Posted by aalaap on Super User See other posts from Super User or by aalaap
Published on 2009-09-02T11:59:15Z Indexed on 2010/04/29 23:37 UTC
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mac

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osx

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spotlight

I do understand that the point of Spotlight is to look inside files, but it also returns file name matches, and that's what I need most of the time. Besides, Spotlight is running so absurdly slow on my system (Snow Leopard on the iMac '08), it's just unusable. I downloaded Canary and Spotlight wasn't able to find the app file for 15 minutes. It was already in the download stack, but as far as Spotlight goes, the file doesn't exist.

Hence, I would like to know of a way to make Spotlight only index the file names, which would perhaps make it a bit faster. I'm looking at mimicking the behaviour of Windows applications such as AvaFind or Search Everything

Edit: Let me highlight the fact that I am looking for an AvaFind or Search Everything replacement for Mac OS X. Go try one of these on a Windows machine and you'll understand my disappointment with Spotlight or any other popular search tools in OS X.

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