Ever wanted to spotlight your Mac at home no matter what computer you were on? Searchlight allows you to search your Mac’s files and view them remotely from any web browser on any computer, and even comes with an iPhone app. You even have the option of having the files emailed to your iPhone. Searchlight is a three part program.

Since you are always on the go, and can’t always bring your computer with you, having access to any and all of your files is very useful. Sure you could carry a thumbdrive, or portable HD, but being able to access them on your iPhone or iPod Touch is a lot easier, and gives you less to carry.

Setup is pretty easy. The Mac half of Searchlight installs as a preference pane, and once you install it, just turn it on, and you are about ready to go. You’ll have to turn on port forwarding for port 443 on your router to the computer you have setup with Searchlight. If you don’t want to dive into your router’s settings, you can download Port Map, a free app, that will let you set up the port forwarding without touching your router. As long as Port Map is running, the port(s) you specify will be forwarded to your computer. If you’re on a local network, Searchlight will appear in the bonjour servers list in your Safari browser.

Once you turn on Searchlight, you are ready to use your files anywhere. From your iPhone, once you start up the Searchlight app a list of servers is shown. Bonjour servers are automatically shown, but if you want to access a remote server, you’ll have to manually input the info for it. Select your computer and you’ll need to login with your username and password from your computer account, then get ready to search your files.If you are planning on using Searchlight remotely, I’d recommend setting it up while next to the computer you plan on using it with. Since Searchlight relies on your IP address for remote access, you’ll want to have this all set before you leave your computer.

Depending on what you are searching for and your network, getting results is fairly quick. Organized by file type, Searchlight will tell you how many of each file type there is that matches your search, and from there you can select what you are looking for to get details about each file. If you know exactly what you are looking for, you can tell it to only display results of that file type.

Results are displayed differently, depending if you searched for a specific file type, or just anything. Now all this is only helpful if you can’t at least read and view those files on your iPhone. With Searchlight, you can do exactly that. Select any file you want and you can view it on your iPhone. On the web you can choose between list view or thumbnail view, as well as quick look files on the beautiful Ajax web interface. You can download files (but no uploading).

Verdict

Searchlight is an extremely useful app. Since everyone that has an iPhone usually always has it with them, they also always have all their files with them, if they are using Searchlight. If you forget to bring your iPhone to a meeting, and still need to access your files, you can still do it via a web browser. Just point your web browser to your IP address, with the port number, and you can login into your computer via Searchlight, just like you would with your iPhone.

If you have an Edge connection on your iPhone, getting results with a large list can be a little slow, due to the amount of information needed to receive. Milind was able to connect to my computer via the Searchlight web interface and was able to complete a search and download a file from around the world, although it was a little sluggish. Yes, a 256k downstream connection had a big role to play here.

Searchlight is available from Gravity Apps for $39 for use with two devices, or Searchlight Pro for $399 with lets you use unlimited devices. The iPhone extension is free.