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Comment by rover | Hacker News Reader

You'll definitely find what you're looking for here. http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/terminal-commands-fo...

To save you some time, add a folder as follows:

mdimport -f /Library

On recent OS X versions (Lion at the very least), the problem isn't that /Library and ~/Library aren't indexed by default; they are. Trouble is that if I search for a file named, say "com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist", Finder appears to run a query akin to

    kMDItemDisplayName == "com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist"
    && kMDItemSupportFileType != MDSystemFile

which returns nothing on my system, rather than simply

    kMDItemDisplayName == "com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist"

which returns three results, one each in subdirectories of /System/Library, /Library, and ~/Library.

There's an option in the "full" Spotlight search window that lets you control this for any given search, under "Other..." in the drop-down you get when you click "+" to add criteria. It's called, logically enough, "System files".

Incidentally, the mdfind command line tool doesn't have this behavior by default.

If you want a nice GUI, try Tembo (http://www.houdah.com/tembo). Tembo is a Spotlight front-end. Incidentally it searches all indexed locations, including Library folders.

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