I'm trying to set up a Saved Search of my Mac that will exclude files in a folder called 'XYZ' from the search results. The reason is because I'm getting a ton of false positives from that folder that are difficult to sort through.
Just to be clear, I know you can add folders to a "Privacy" list in the Spotlight preferences, but I don't want to add this folder to that list –because I don't want to exclude it from all future searches, just this specific saved search. Any idea how something like this could be done?
Best Answer
I looked at some of the saved search files in Finder's application bundle, and for example
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries/myDocuments.cannedSearch/search.savedSearch
used a format like this for excluding directories:So you can exclude subfolders by adding strings that start with a minus character after a full path. Something like
-~/Library
doesn't seem to work.You can edit savedSearch files by dropping them on a text editor.
RawQueryDict:SearchScopes
andFXScope:FXScopeArrayOfPaths
seem to list the same paths by default, but just editing the second one appeared to exclude folders at least in Finder.