Bring Spotlight To The Cloud With Precipitate
If you are a heavy user of either Google Bookmarks or Google Docs, you now have a way of searching your content via the OS X built-in Spotlight tool.
Written by Stuart Morgan and available for free (open source, in fact!), this simple application makes a local copy of your files on your machine that are then imported by Spotlight. Precipitate periodically checks in with the “cloud” and updates the local files to reflect any changes. The developer notes that changes may take up to an hour to be visible in local searches.
If a Spotlight search finds an indexed Google Docs file, it will open it up in your browser with the appropriate Google Docs application, so you are always editing the “cloud” copy.
While making a local copy is not ideal, it does facilitate greater integration into your local workflows and fills a niche where you would otherwise have to use the OS X version of Google Desktop Search (or just operate completely online). While I am not a heavy user of either Google Docs or Bookmarks, this solution may just give me more impetus to go that route. Curious/security-minded readers may also like to know that Precipitate stores the cached documents in ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Precipitate.
If you use or try Precipitate, drop us a note and if you have alternate ways to locate your cloud data from OS X, let other TAB readers know by posting in the comments!
#1 Brad says:The idea sounds good, and I was at first tempted. (I’m a big fan of flat filing and tagging, a heavy Quicksilver user, and I prefer to search rather than file my docs.) But Google’s searching is so powerful I don’t see a real use for Precipitate; not unless someone does a lot of offline work.