DEVONthink and Spotlight

There are times people want to use Apple’s Spotlight to search for a file in a DEVONthink database. Without going too deeply in technical matters, Spotlight doesn’t index inside the type of file a DEVONthink database is. Due to this, we use a technique to write out some of the metadata for Spotlight to index.

You are given the choice to make a Spotlight index for a database when you create one. You can turn on the option by checking the Create Spotlight Index in File > Database Properties for a database.

But one thing to note: When you search for a file in Spotlight, the found items will be .dtp2 files. These are the metadata files, not the files in the database. If you reveal the file, it will not be the file you’re looking for. You need to double-click on the result to display the file in your database. So Spotlight can be a quick way you can open a file in the database and interact with it there.

If you are looking for a great Spotlight alternative, check out our application DEVONsphere Express. It allows you to search in open DEVONthink databases, as well as find many other file types on your machine.