The Mac|Life 101 series is where you can come to learn new and simple ways to do things with Apple’s desktop and mobile operating systems. Whether you’re new to the platform, or just want to learn a new technique, then MacLife 101 is for you.

Spotlight is not only a great way to search for files in the abyss on your hard drive, but it’s also a great tool for productivity. There’s several hidden features that make Spotlight a power house for getting things done on your Mac. From being a calculator, to letting you launch apps, we’ll show you all of the tricks that make Spotlight so powerful.

Do Math

Spotlight is a pretty smart cookie. So smart, in fact, that it can do math without thinking. Give it a try. Simply launch spotlight and type in just about any arithmetic statement, and it’ll spit out the answer right before your eyes.

For example, click the Spotlight button and type in this statement:

(31+3)-(31*1)

In the Calculator heading, the correct answer will appear. It is important to note that when evaluating complex mathematical statements, Spotlight uses the standard order of operations; so, be sure to sure to use parenthesis if a particular order matters. 

Launch Apps

To launch apps with Spotlight, visit System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results, and ensure that “Applications” is dragged to the “1” position (this is the order that the search results appear in).

Next, launch Spotlight with the default Command + Space bar shortcut, type in the application name, and as soon as it appears at the top of the results, press the Enter key. The application will launch.

Searching with Modifiers

Searching with modifiers lets you easily narrow down your search results to a specific type of file, the date it was modified, or other keywords.

To do this, launch Spotlight, type in your search query, and then type one of the modifiers after the search query.

To modify the returned items by kind, type kind, and then a file extension. For example:

Numbers kind: app

hello kind: document

You can use the kind keyword with almost all general types of files: document, movie, spreadsheet, etc.

You can also use the modified keyword to modify search results by the date they were last modified. For instance, you can do:

hello kind: document modified: 2011 

This will return all documents matching “hello” with the document type that has been modified in year 2011.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Command +Up/Down

When searching, sometimes a result you’re looking for is in another category listed in the results. To jump between categories in the search results, use the Command + Up/Down shortcut. When you get to the appropriate category, use just the up/down arrow keys to move between the items in the category.

Command + Return / Command + Click

Sometimes, you may not want to open a file returned by Spotlight; instead, you may want to view the file in the Finder. To do this, you have two options. You can select the item with the Up/Down arrow, and then press Command + Return; or, you can Command + Click on the file in the search results. This will open a new Finder window with the file selected.

Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author on Twitter.