MacOS – Prioritise spotlight search results in El Capitan

If you're happy with the terminal you can use the find command.

Something like opening Terminal in Utilities.

cd <folder name>
find . -name <whatever you're searching for>

Once found you can open it up with open

So, I can do something like:

alex@smiley:~|⇒  cd Desktop
alex@smiley:~/Desktop|⇒  find . -name Mac*
./Mac Pro.spx
alex@smiley:~/Desktop|⇒  open Mac\ Pro.spx

Notice that I used the * as a wildcard to match all files starting with Mac

1. Find the importer used to import that type of file.

   mdimport -d 4 -n /path/to/file 2>&1 | grep Imported

   mdimport -d 4 -n ~/Desktop/avatar.png 2>&1 | grep Imported
   2014-06-19 11:17:04.929 mdimport[30911:412893] Imported '/Users/grgarside/Desktop/avatar.png' of type 'public.png' with plugIn /System/Library/Spotlight/Image.mdimporter.
   

   ^{The above example shows the type as public.png in the Image.mdimporter importer.}

2. Open /path/to/importer/Contents/Info.plist in an editor.

3. Find the item of the same type as the type of the file that you found from the above command and delete it.

   

4. Reimport the importer.

   mdimport -r /path/to/importer

   mdimport -r /System/Library/Spotlight/Image.mdimporter
   

Don't forget to have backups and note this procedure may be overridden on OS X updates.