Retrieving Spotlight query used to open document in application

Posted by vicvicvic on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by vicvicvic
Published on 2010-04-06T03:04:09Z Indexed on 2010/04/06 3:13 UTC
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spotlight

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cocoa

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osx

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objective-c

If you search for something that opens Preview.app (e.g. a PDF file) in Spotlight, the application not only opens the file but actually copies the Spotlight query into the application's search field (for deeper search). iPhoto and Mail.app also do this.

This is a really nice feature. Unfortunately, Apple does not document how it's implemented. Opening a document from Spotlight appears to simply send application:openFile to the application delegate. Is it possible to retrieve the user's Spotlight query somehow? Or is this a hardcoded feature of Spotlight?

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