Better alternative to Spotlight

I have MacOS 10 Sierra on an iMac 2017. Ever since I switched from Windows, I have had only one disappointment: Searching the hard disk for content. Searching filenames, someone here suggested Find Any File, which is great. Is there a search engine that will search the content inside files with the skill of FAF. Maybe I am using it wrong, but Spotlight doesn't do it very well. Thank you.

Give "EasyFind" a try. It's free and works both ways.

Thank you. I have installed it, and tested it, and, you're right, it's good. I am curious about "works both ways". What does that mean in this context?

It will search on just names of files as well as content of those files. Hence, "both ways."

I guess I missed this earlier, so maybe I should keep the tradition going and also mention Find Any File.app (FAF).

Both applications are needed and useful IMHO and work independently of Spotlight (aka Stoplight )
Thomas Tempelmann - Find Any File



- Patrick
======

Normally I would agree with using Find Any File. However, until the developer publishes his 64 bit version and we see what he charges for it, I will stick with Easy Find - which by the way, does basically the same thing as Find Any File.

No harm at all in keeping the FAF tradition going, Patrick.. It's a nice piece of kit; but the OP implied in their first post that they had already tried it.;D

Ian

chscag said:

Normally I would agree with using Find Any File. However, until the developer publishes his 64 bit version and we see what he charges for it, I will stick with Easy Find - which by the way, does basically the same thing as Find Any File.

Click to expand...

Got a question for ya about Easy Find. I downloaded this morning to give it a try and I find what I would call a "feature I can do without"...unless I am just doing something wrong again, which seems to happen quite often. In searching for a file the only way I found to make it work was I had to set the program to look in a particular volume in order to show me the file. If I just typed in the file name it would act like it found it but would not show the location.

Seeing as my system contains 2 different hard drives with multiple "volumes" that seems rather unhandy. Am I doing something wrong here, is there a way to make this program search all volumes and show location of requested file ?

James, one of the columns in the default view in EasyFInd is headed "Location" and is there the path to the file is displayed, You may need to scroll to the right to get it to show if your screen is small or you have the EF window small. Are you saying that the file is found, but the path is not in that column?

Hmmm I find no "Location" listed anywhere in the program, but what I did find is in the box just below where you type in the file name on the right side choice of All volumes, local volumes, removable volumes, selecting all volumes solves the problem for me anyway as it then searches all the volumes in both drives and gives me the location that it finds the files at. Seems to work quickly. Thanks for the reply.

Yes, the Location does not appear until the program finds something to show you. Glad you found what you wanted.

BTW, you can tell the program to search ONLY one device, or all of them. If you know the drive, the search is much faster.

@James

James, do you not have an option such as shown in the screenshot below???

The "patrick" shown is my normal selected username folder where most stuff would be, but as you should be able to see, I have many other choices to choose from, including various partitioned volumes:






I'm using EasyFind v. 4.9.3.


- Patrick
======

Yes this is what I finally stumbled across. When I first tried the program I just entered the name of the file I wanted to find and it would not show it unless I gave the name of the volume it was in...if I knew that what do I need the program for...(G) But then I finally selected the All Volumes and now it searches all volumes in both drives to find the files requested. Works quite well and quickly too.