About Spotlight Importers

Spotlight metadata importers extract metadata from custom file formats after files are saved, copied, or moved. That custom metadata can then be searched from applications, both System applications and custom applications,. The files can be searched on local disks and networked storage on OS X.

Who Should Read This Document

If your applications supports saving its custom file formats to disk, you should consider providing Spotlight support by implementing a metadata importer.

Read this document to learn how metadata importers work and how to write an importer.

Organization of This Document

The following articles cover key concepts in understanding how metadata importers work:

• Extracting Metadata from Files describes the role of the metadata importer and its components.

• Assigning Values to Metadata Attributes provides an overview of the Spotlight metadata attributes and explains how to define your own attributes.

• Spotlight Importer Schema Format describes the format of a Spotlight importer schema file.

These articles explain how to implement metadata importers:

• Spotlight Importer Performance describes important performance considerations.

• Writing a Spotlight Importer explains how to write a metadata importer.

• Troubleshooting Spotlight Importers answers questions you might have when you’re testing your Spotlight importers.