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File size: 6.95 MB
Find Any File is a program for Apple's macOS that lets you search for files on your disks.
• Contrary to Spotlight (or the search in Finder), it does not use a database but instead uses the file system driver's fast search operations, where available. This lets you search for file properties such as name, dates, size, kind etc., and even for plain text contents quite fast.
• Find Any File can find files that Spotlight doesn't, e.g. those inside bundles and packages and in inside folders that are usually excluded from Spotlight search. It can even search in other user's folders if you use FAF's unique root search mode.
Find Any File doesn't replace Spotlight, but it complements it greatly:
• If you search for files by name, size, dates, kind and other directory properties, use FAF, because only then you can be sure that everything available is found.
• FAF can also find text content if it's uncompressed, as in plain text files and even most binary files. And with the new option to include Spotlight results, it can even find text in compressed PDF, Word and Excel documents if they were indexed by Spotlight.
• FAF can not find metadata stored in files, though, such as image sizes, EXIF data and GPS coordinates. If in doubt, see the manual or simply try out FAF for free, please.
Features:
Find Any File has a few gems that other search tools do not offer:
1. Better results: It offers an alternative hierarchical view for the found items. You can switch to it with cmd+2 or click on the right little icon at the top of the results window.
Note that the search above revealed hundreds of hits. If you'd look at that many results in a flat list, it would be hard to browse. With this new hierarchical view, however, you can directly look for the results in the folders that interest you.
2. Image Preview: If you're looking for pictures, the image preview browser is helpful as well (new in version 1.9):
3. Find everything on your disk: If you hold the Option key (alt ⌥) down in the Find window, the Find button turns into Find All. If you click on it then, you are asked for an administrator password - and then Find Any File will restart in root mode, being able to find really any file on your Mac's volumes, including files in other users' home directories (something that Spotlight won't do).
Note that this will only work on local disks, not on network mounts, though.
4. You can save your entered searches to files (they'll have the extension ".faf"). You can then double click them in the Finder to have them start the search immediately, or use the saved search as a preset. |
