Mac – Does Spotlight normally index links in ~/Applications
homebrewmacvimspotlight
I have installed MacVim through homebrew, and this resulted in an alias in ~/Applications that points to /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.3-66/MacVim.app.
Unfortunately MacVim does not show up in Spotlight searches. Is this normal?
Best Answer
It's actually a symlink and not an alias. Spotlight indexes symlinks to files that are treated as system files, but it doesn't show them in the GUI. It does show aliases though, so you could just command-option-drag /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/*/MacVim.app to /Applications from Finder.
Or convert the symlinks to aliases:
brew linkapps; find ~/Applications -type l | while read f; do osascript -e "tell app \"Finder\" to make new alias file at POSIX file \"/Applications\" to POSIX file \"$(/usr/bin/stat -f%Y "$f")\""; rm "$f"; done
Or if you use Alfred, it can be set to include applications in /usr/local/Cellar in the default search results.
In the Finder, press CommandShiftG for Go to the Folder. Type /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.3-61/ and press return. Select the file (actually a folder) MacVim.app Press CommandL for Make Alias. Depending on permissions, you may be prompted for an administrator password here.
Press CommandN to create a New Finder Window.
Press CommandShiftA to go to the Applications folder in that window.
Drag the newly created alias from the window in which it was created to the window containing the Applications folder. Rename the alias so it no longer ends in " alias".
Do you have several versions of Node installed via homebrew? Every time it updates node homebrew puts the newest version alongside the old one and then updates the symlinks to the newest version. Running the brew cleanup should reduce that up a bit for you.
Best Answer
It's actually a symlink and not an alias. Spotlight indexes symlinks to files that are treated as system files, but it doesn't show them in the GUI. It does show aliases though, so you could just command-option-drag /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/*/MacVim.app to /Applications from Finder.
Or convert the symlinks to aliases:
Or if you use Alfred, it can be set to include applications in /usr/local/Cellar in the default search results.