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Tag: Tips & Tricks

Working With the File Info Pane

HoudahSpot uses the macOS Spotlight index for ultra-fast file searches. By building upon Spotlight, HoudahSpot can find files by name, text content, as well a wide variety of file properties and metadata.

Spotlight in turn relies on importer plug-ins to read all kinds of files. When indexing a file, Spotlight calls upon the plug-in that specializes in the file type at hand to extract text and metadata. Such importers are installed with the system and with applications that introduce new file formats.

The Info pane in HoudahSpot shows the information available for a given file. This is the metadata that the importer plug-in has shared with the Spotlight index.

File Info Pane: All Metadata
Photo file metadata

Continue reading Working With the File Info Pane

Finding Files with Long File Names

The native macOS file systems impose remarkably few restrictions on file names and path lengths. Mac users can name files with long names and descriptive names. Useful as these are, such file names can prove a burden when files need to be shared, copied to other file systems, or uploaded to certain cloud services.

Indeed many other systems limit the length of file names. Before attempting to move files to such systems it is useful to check names for compliance with restrictions. Hence the need to search file files with names longer than the imposed limit.

In this post, we are going to check a folder structure for files with names more than 140 characters long.

Acme Painted Tunnel Project Long File Names Continue reading Finding Files with Long File Names

Working With the Tag Cloud

The tag cloud is a new addition in HoudahSpot 6.0. The tag cloud helps you incrementally refine your search to include only the most relevant files.

In previous blog posts, we have looked a how to assign file tags in HoudahSpot and the different ways you can find and filter files by tags. Let’s see how the tag cloud fits in and helps you find files faster.

Finder tags are a useful way to categorize your files. They are color-coded labels that you can assign to files. You can use tags to flag certain files. For example, you may want to flag your favorite photos. You can also use tags to organize files. What makes tags particularly useful is that you can assign multiple tags to a file. A single file can be organized into different categories. Tag a file with “Acme Corp”, “Painted Tunnel Project”, “Invoice”, and “Past Due”. You can find the file when listing all correspondence with “Acme Corp”. You will find the same file when searching for “Past Due” and “Invoice”.

The true power of HoudahSpot lies in the fact that it helps you narrow down a search to the point where the list of results has only relevant files and is easy to manage. File information and previews then make it easy to quickly pick the files you actually need.

The tag cloud is the latest addition to your HoudahSpot file searching toolbelt. You can use the tag cloud to quickly find tagged files. The tag cloud is also a very powerful way to incrementally refine your search when you are looking for files.

Acme Corp file tag Continue reading Working With the Tag Cloud

Video Tour of HoudahSpot 6.0

Finding files on your Mac can be a difficult and sometimes a frustrating task because of their sheer number — we all have so many!

HoudahSpot is an application that allows you to do refined searches to get just the files you are looking for and includes several useful presets right out of the box.

Todd Olthoff of ScreenCastsOnline revisits HoudahSpot and shows you all that is new in version 6.0.

Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline has covered HoudahSpot in the past so this screencast from Todd focuses on the updates that version 6 brings to the search party.

Below is a short preview. Watch the full show for free with a 7-day trial ScreenCastsOnline subscription. Continue reading Video Tour of HoudahSpot 6.0

Customize Your HoudahSpot Search Setup

In HoudahSpot, you can choose between hundreds of criteria to search for files. HoudahSpot also lets you specify in which folders to search and how to sort results.

There are lots of options to choose from – and settings you don’t want to make over and again.

Search criteria, results display, and sort order are a matter of personal preference and habits. You may, for example, find yourself frequently searching for files by file extension. You may prefer to search your full hard drive rather than just your home folder. You may want search results always to list file size.

Let’s see how you can set up HoudahSpot so that a new search window matches your preferred way of searching.

Continue reading Customize Your HoudahSpot Search Setup

Using HoudahGeo 6 With Cameras That Provide Altitude or Heading Measurements

Geocoding using GPS data is arguably the quickest method of adding location information to photos. The GPS data comes in the form of a tracklog file recorded by a GPS device or smartphone app. Every few seconds a record of the current time and location is added to the tracklog.

Besides location coordinates, the GPS device can record additional information like altitude, heading, or speed. When HoudahGeo matches photos to the tracklog it can copy both location coordinates and such additional information to photo metadata.

At the same time, some cameras have sensors that can provide such additional information even when not using a GPS receiver to add location coordinates to a photo.

A compass built into the camera body can, for example, provide viewing direction information. This would be more accurate than a view direction computed from the direction of travel between to locations recorded in the tracklog.

When the same information is available from two sources – the GPS tracklog and photo metadata – you are left with the choice of which to trust.

Continue reading Using HoudahGeo 6 With Cameras That Provide Altitude or Heading Measurements

Summer: Time to Travel Reminisce

Summer is here. Summer holidays are just around the corner. This is the time of year when many of us usually plan to travel and explore the world. Not so this year.

Explore. Reminisce. Show

This year we can reminisce about past travels and adventures. This summer we can dig into our well-organized photo collections. Photos organized by location now allow us to virtually jump around the globe and through time. We can explore photos in Google Earth to feel teleported to places we had the luck to visit. With photos pinned to precise map locations, we can retrace our steps in Google Maps. Nothing refreshes the memory like photos combined with the aerial views that reveal how the individual pictures connect.

Photos on Google Maps
Photos on Google Maps: Visit to Taj Mahal

Continue reading Summer: Time to Travel Reminisce

CustomShortcuts 1.0 – Free Tool to Customize Menu Shortcuts

Are you using the same menu item over and again? Are you always reaching for the mouse because that menu item has no keyboard shortcut?

Are there keyboard shortcuts you simply can’t remember? Have you noticed that a key shortcut that might be easy to reach on a US keyboard layout requires two hands on your keyboard?
CustomShortcuts 1.0 Screenshot
Continue reading CustomShortcuts 1.0 – Free Tool to Customize Menu Shortcuts

Correct the Date and Time of Photos using HoudahGeo 6.0

When we refer to time we can say “It’s 2 PM”. This is easy enough to understand. It is early afternoon at our current location.

Digital cameras record date and time in a similar manner. When you load a photo onto your computer, you can see the time as recorded by the camera: 2 PM. The computer, however, cannot make much sense of this information. It is missing an important clue: location or time zone. For all it knows, “2 PM” could mean early afternoon in Hawaii or early afternoon in New York. A 6-hour difference!

What’s more, the camera clock may not actually have the correct time. You could have forgotten to set it as you traveled through time zones. Your photo of the New York night sky could indeed show a “2 PM” camera time.

Photo with incorrect time

We thus face two tasks:

  1. Set the correct time on the photo. E.g. “2 PM Hawaiian time”
  2. Make that time look “right”. E.g. “8 PM New York time”

Let’s walk through the process.

Continue reading Correct the Date and Time of Photos using HoudahGeo 6.0

Use “Service Station” to Start a HoudahSpot File Search From Finder

Service Station is a new utility by Knurling Group to customize the Finder context menu with applications and scripts. It is a free download with in-app purchases on the Mac App Store.Screenshot: Finder Context Menu with Service Station Extension

HoudahSpot by Houdah Software is a powerful file search tool for macOS. It takes the guesswork out of Spotlight searches and helps you find files hidden deep in the “haystack” of files accumulated over the years.

You can point HoudahSpot at a particular Finder folder using the Services menu or the HoudahSpot Finder toolbar item.

Service Station can put HoudahSpot at the top level of the Finder context menu. You can then right-click or control-click a selection of folders in Finder and start a new HoudahSpot search within these folders.

Continue reading Use “Service Station” to Start a HoudahSpot File Search From Finder