Managing Leopard’s Smart Folders

November 20th, 2007 at 2:00 PM - Tips by Jeff Gamet

Mac OS X 10.5 includes some pre-made Smart Folders that find all of the images, movies, and documents on your computer. Thatis a really cool feature -- unless some of those files arenit supposed to be seen. If you need to keep Spotlight from including certain directories out of Leopardis Smart Folders, just say so... with the Spotlight PreferencePane.

Hereis how:

• Choose Apple menu > System Preferences to launch the System Preferences application.
• Select Spotlight.
• Click the Privacy tab.
• Drag the folders you want Spotlight to stay out of into the Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations list.

This is handy if you work on projects that include files that shouldnit be too easy to find, but it wonit stop someone from sifting through your hard drive to see what they can find. If you want to make sure that certain documents canit accidentally be seen by the wrong people, store them on a different hard drive that is always under your control.

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