A list of shortcut keys you can use with Spotlight.
Spotlight, Mac OS X’s search feature, can be accessed and used with a number of shortcut keys. Here’s a quick rundown for reference.
Opening Spotlight
Command-Spacebar activates the Spotlight menu on the far right end of the menu bar. You can then type your search word or phrase into the field at the top of the menu.
Command-
Option-
Spacebar opens the Spotlight search window. You can then type your search word or phrase into the search box at the top-right corner of the window.
Selecting Items in the Spotlight Menu of Search Results
Return opens a selected item.
Command-Return opens the window for the Top Hit item on the Spotlight menu or, if another item is highlighted, that item. This is the same as Command-clicking on a selected item. (Thanks to reader Tom for clarifying this.)
Command-Click displays the item you clicked in the Finder but does not open it.
Down Arrow or Up Arrow selects the next or previous item in the menu.
Home selects the Show All option at the top of the menu.
End selects the Spotlight Preferences option at the bottom of the menu.
Command-Down Arrow or Command-Up Arrow selects the first item in the next or previous category.
Option-Down Arrow or Option-Up Arrow moves the insertion point to the end or the beginning of the text in the Spotlight menu’s search box.
Note that Apple’s Help feature includes a few additional shortcuts. These don’t seem to work with Leopard, so I haven’t included them here.
Chapter References
Chapter 5 of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide covers Spotlight in detail. It explains how to use the Spotlight menu and the Spotlight Find window, as well as how to create, save, and reuse saved searches. Chapter 5 also explains how to set Spotlight preferences to set the order of search result categories, add or remove categories, and exclude folders from searching.
Cmd-Return opened the top hit in Tiger, when Show All was highlighted by default. In Leopard, the top hit is highlighted by default, and Cmd-Return now is equivalent to Cmd-click (which makes much more sense to me).
Thanks very much for clarifying this. I knew there was a difference in the way Leopard handled this, but without Tiger installed on a computer, there was no way for me to compare. In Tiger, distinctly remember typing in my search phrase and pressing Return to get a window of search results; this doesn’t work in Leopard.