Get a better search for your Apple Mac and find lost files faster

In some ways Spotlight is a great search tool in macOS and it helps you to find files, apps, folders, and bookmarks, but in some ways, it is poor. EasyFind is a more powerful search tool.

Search with Spotlight

I have never been a great fan of Spotlight on the Mac and never use it. Although it does some things brilliantly, it is not a file search tool and it is quite poor at finding files.

Enter a keyword or two and it will find matching items in System Preferences, which aren't hard to find, especially when there is a search already facility there.

It finds apps in the Applications folder, but Shift+Cmd+A will open the Applications folder and you can see all the apps yourself.

It finds emails you have received or sent.

Related: Brilliant ways to find files on a Mac with Spotlight and search

To be fair, it does find a few files and folders, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand.

Search with Finder

Finder has a search box in the top right corner of each window that it is much better at finding files than Spotlight. You can enter a search term and it will then show matches in the current folder and subfolders, or the Mac's disk.

This is fine if you know exactly what you are searching for, but it is a bit clunky when you need to perform a complex search

Suppose you want to search for all documents starting with Mac... stored in Microsoft word .docx file format. Here's what you have to do:

1. Type mac into the search box.
2. This displays a search bar below and you must click the plus button to add a search filter.
3. Click Name and select Other from the menu.
4. Click File Extension in the list of other items.
5. Select File Extension and enter .docx in the box to the right.
6. Click the plus again to open another search filter
7. Click Matches and select begins with.
8. Enter Mac in the box on the right

Eight steps just to perform a search for documents! Here is what it looks like:

Use EasyFind to search

EasyFind is a free utility for searching the Mac's disk for files, folders and text. It has a lot of useful options, such as searching only for files or only for folders. It can search the contents of files for the text you specify. Download EasyFind direct or get it from the Mac App Store.

Most useful is the Unix-Wildcards and this uses ? To represent a single character and * to represent any number of characters. To find all files starting with Mac and having the .docx extension you would enter:

mac*.docx

It finds the files you are looking for before you have even built the filters in Finder. It is fast.

Not only is it fast, it supports Quick Look and you can select a file and press the spacebar to view it. There is a toolbar button to open a Finder window and show the file's location on the disk.

EasyFind also looks in places where Spotlight and Finder don't look. You can get Finder to find invisible files, but you need to define an extra custom search filter, which takes more time. In EasyFind you just tick the box next to Invisible files & Folders.

Two or more words can be entered into EasyFind's search box and it can find files with all the words or any words. Yes, Finder will do that, but it is another search filter that needs to be built. EasyFind is one click selection.

EasyFind will also search in places where neither Finder or Spotlight looks. For example, you can search for preferences files which store configuration information. For example, search for *.plist to find all preferences files or m*.plist to find preferences files starting with the letter m.

Related: Best tips and tricks for Spotlight searches

When I want to find a file, EasyFind is the app I use and not Finder or Spotlight. It is just so much easier.