Rolling On The Floor Laughing: MoRU: Smarter Searching for Smarter Searchers

MoRU is an application that provides an enhanced interface to Apple's Spotlight searching tool found in Mac OS X 10.4. MoRU allows you to create more powerful searches than is possible using the basic Spotlight interface, while improving usability.

MoRU was designed not just as a searching tool, but as a utility that keeps recently used documents and applications right at your fingertips. All searches in MoRU are automatically sorted according to when each items was most recently modified, opened, or created, which means that items that you have worked on recently will be right at the top of the search results. As files are modified, opened, or created, they bubble to the top of the list, keeping them easily accessible.

MoRU has many advantages over the basic Spotlight interface:

The Power of "OR"

The basic Spotlight interface only allows you to compose searches using the "AND" operator (intersection). MoRU takes searching to the next level by allowing you to mix in the "OR" operator (union) in your searches. For example, you can search for files which are either "MP3" or "Mpeg4".

Be Precise

MoRU gives you more control over the way in which text is searched. You can choose to match just file names, just content, or both. You can choose to match all words, any word, or using an operator expression. In the basic Spotlight interface, the way in which text is searched is neither obvious nor very controllable, and is frequently not what you mean.

Time for a Change

Files which have been used recently are more likely to be needed again soon than are files which have not been used recently. Acknowledging this fact, MoRU always keeps search results sorted by time (last modification date, last opened date, or creation date), thus bringing recently used files to the top of the results list.

The Path Less Traveled

With the basic Spotlight interface, you need to click on a file in the search results to see its path. Never to be outdone, MoRU shows you the path to each file in the search results directly in the search results.