Box Drive Spotlight Indexing - Will this ever be a feature?
Box is great for my needs but one major issue is the fact that Spotlight (Mac OSX) does not index Box drive. Therefore, I can't use Spotlight or search for files. I know box has its own search but it's not as useful as Spotlight and derivative apps liek Alfred. Will there ever be a fix for this or is it not possible to do this?
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Official comment
Hi Alexander,
Welcome to the Box Community!
We appreciate you following up on this product feature request.
Currently this feature suggestion is not in our roadmap and at present, Spotlight search on Box Drive is a known limitation.
If this is something you would like to be able to do, I would highly recommend up-voting and sharing your experience on this feature request via pulse.box.com!
Our product managers review these requests and take them into consideration for future product development.
Thanks again for your participation in the Community!
Best,
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Spotlight searching of information stored on the hard drive is a fundamental functionality. The workaround (Box search) is not satisfactory.
I often have to work offline, and have a number of files marked for offline access (that is, full copies are stored locally on the computer.) I need Spotlight to be able to find all the filenames in the Box index stored on my computer, as well as any content in the files that are stored locally.
It seems a matter of removing the block that prevents Spotlight from indexing MacintoshHD/Users/Username/Box.
Please address this soon. Don't force us to move from Box Sync to a platform that doesn't work.
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I upgraded to a new Mac with an M1 chip. Previously I'd been able to search my files stored in box by using Spotlight. That no longer works. The Box search is quite rudimentary compared to Spotlight. I have many files and will unfortunately need to switch away from Box because of this.
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Totally Agree, I have been a box user for ages and I didnt want to upgrade to Box Drive for this reason too, i was ¨partially happy¨ with Box Sync as this allowed spotlight to find local files, this no longer works with Box Drive. I am also totally considering moving to a different platform because of this. I will give it one year max if this feature is not implemented.
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I haven't yet upgraded to Box Drive for EXACTLY THIS REASON. The files I share with Box should fundamentally still be MY files on MY computer and fit in with the Mac's built in search.
It is irrational to block off files we choose to upload to box from our own operating system.
Box Sync still manages to do EXACTLY what I want Box to do and I really hope they take the unwanted limitations of Box Drive for users who work primarily on their own OS.
Box should be a service that works with me and my OS, not a replacement OS I am forced to use with a subset of my files that I am choosing to share with the service.
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I'm not sure why nobody from Box mentions this, but.... if you're using Box Drive, for any folder that you mark as "Make available offline", those contents *will* be indexed by Spotlight. So if you're migrating from Box Sync (which causes your files to be local anyhow), just migrate to Box Drive and make those same folders be available offline. They will be indexed by Spotlight as before.
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