I guess nobody will deny that although incredibly useful, Spotlight can be incredibly frustrating too. You know, the “why searching when I only entered two characters” feeling. I use {{LaunchBar}} to send the query to Spotlight when I’ve typed the full string and when I want to search for filenames only (which is what I want most of the time), I hit ⌘ + F in the folder where I want to search.

But what if I want to perform a logical search and don’t want to take the Raw Queries hell path?

Here comes Spotlaser.

Click to see full size.
Note that Spotlaser matches your Appearance preference,
I use Graphite but switched to the more ubiquitous Blue for this screenshot.

The screengrab is self explanatory, enter your search attributes (the top one search filenames only), hit ↩ or click the round thingy at the bottom and boom: You can view the results of the search in a Finder Smart Folder.

Now, there are a few of things that could be enhanced, IMHO:

• The only way to use a specific location is to use a open dialog and navigate to the folder you want. This is slow and requires the mouse. You can’t even drop a folder on the path field or edit it. A good thing would be to be able to drop a folder on Spotlaser window or Dock Icon and to be able to type the path too (with the last paths remembered, please). It could then be possible to “open” a folder in Spotlaser via a launcher or in a script. Yummy!
• I don’t know why, but the “Who” field is grayed out most of the time (see picture).
• I’d like to be able to tab through all elements, not just text fields.
• A global hotkey could be nice.
• It’s nice that Spotlaser respects the Appearance preference, but there is a small delay when it switches to Graphite.

Still, Spotlaser is well designed and makes Spotlight easy to use. Why Apple didn’t make something like that is beyond me. Spotlight is donationware, consider donating something if you find it useful. I will.