Sherlock (software)

Sherlock (software)

Sherlock, named after Sherlock Holmes, was a file and web search tool created by Apple Inc. for the Mac OS, introduced with Mac OS 8.5 as an extension of the Mac OS Finder's file searching capabilities. Like its predecessor, it can search for local files and file contents, which it does using the same basic indexing code and search logic found in AppleSearch. Sherlock extended the system by allowing the user to search for items through the world wide web through a set of plugins that harness existing web search engines. These plugins are written as plain text files, so it is fairly simple for a user to write a Sherlock plugin.

Sherlock was replaced by Spotlight and Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, although Apple continued to include it with the default installation. Since most of the standard plug-ins for Sherlock provided by Apple itself no longer function, it was officially retired and removed in the release of Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard in 2007.