Did you know that you can perform simple calculations with Spotlight in Mac OS 10.4 and OS 10.5? All you have do is enter the numbers you’d like to add, subtract, multiply or divide in the Spotlight bar, and Spotlight will automatically update on the fly with the answer. I often do this rather than launch the Calculator app, typically to quickly calculate percentages.
Use the following symbols in both the Calculator app and in Spotlight for performing calculations: + is add, – is subtract, * is multiplication, and / is division. You can use ! for factorial calculations and ^ for exponents. There may be more symbols for other types of calculations; if you know of any, let me know and I will share with other readers.