So you’re impressed by the faster Spotlight searching in Leopard, and want to try using it more often to find stuff. You find that there’s a folder you want quick access to, but its name is too generic, and gets swamped by too many other Spotlight results. You want your chosen folder or file to be *top hit every time*.

The solution’s easy. Find a short keyboard string that’s unlikely to be found elsewhere - something like “z//” or “qqq” or “kkm” - try out some alternatives in Spotlight until you get a “No results found” message. Now, navigate to the folder, file or app that you need quicker access to, and stick your new shortcut string inside the Spotlight Comments field in the Info panel.

Boom! (As Steve would say.) As long as you’ve remembered it, your new short search strong will take you right where you want to go, quickly and efficiently.

Why am I fussing with this when I could just use Quicksilver? Good question. The answer is that I’m trying an experiment. I’m one of those people impressed by the speed of the new Spotlight, and I want to find out if I can switch to it permanently. It’s not like I’m desperate to ditch Quicksilver, but I do like to try and keep my computer free of unnecessary extras. If Spotlight can do everything I used to use Quicksilver for, the latter becomes one of those extras and can be dispensed with.

I’ll let you know how the experiment goes.