You’re probably familiar with Spotlight, but there are other ways to find files on your Mac. And some of them don’t get enough love.
I’ve tried all of these, and I like them all for different reasons. I’m generally happy with HoudahSpot when Spotlight fails me, but I wanted to point these out because they fit specific use-cases — maybe ones you run into often enough to try them out.
HoudahSpot
HoudahSpot is my favorite Spotlight companion. It allows extremely configurable searches with saved templates and a great popup search. The results are easy to work with, with all of the capabilities you’d have in Finder and elsewhere.
I don’t think I’ve ever not been able to find a file I was looking for with HoudahSpot. These days I usually skip Spotlight and just open HoudahSpot’s search, which I have configured on ⇧+⌘+space.
HoudahSpot has great tag autocomplete, so I use it a lot for tagging files. I have Hazel tag all new files in my Desktop and Downloads folder Purple, then I have a HoudahSpot search template that locates all Purple files within those directories (shallow search using a filter), and tag them within HoudahSpot so my TagFiler script can sort them into folders.
Find Any File
Find Any File (FAF) is another great complement to Spotlight. It searches in much the same way as Spotlight, with all kinds of criteria, but it can index network and attached drives that Spotlight can’t. It can also search for text strings inside of zip files and even in binaries. And it can include Spotlight results in its own results, making it a pretty complete replacement for the built-in Spotlight search.
FAF can create searches with multiple criteria, such as filename, extension, date, kind, and more. Its searches take more time than Spotlight, especially if you’re searching network drives, and you have to manually set up the criteria (as opposed to using search syntax), but it will definitely find that file you were looking for.
I like that you have the option in the results window to display files in their directory heirarchy, grouped by location, making it easy to discern between similar matches.
I have FAF’s popup search configured to Hyper+S.
GoToFile
GoToFile pops up a search field and displays results as an extension of the pop up, just like Spotlight does, but it has its own type of super powers.
GoToFile is amazing if you have any idea what the filename you’re looking for is, or recently touched/modified a file. It can quickly navigate through directories, performing fuzzy (or even regular expression) searches for filename. It can show you recent files, and can open files in their default application or in the front most app, making it a legitimate replacement for File->Open. Just saved a file in VS Code and want to open it in Firefox? You’re a couple keystrokes away.
GoToFile is intensely keyboard focused. You can navigate all of its features with shortcuts, narrow search criteria with special syntax, and mark or act on files with a few keystrokes.
I have GoToFile set to Hyper+F.
Ammonite
Ammonite is from the same developer as GoToFile. It focuses on tags, which works for me because I have tagged all of my files for a decade, and prefer to search that way.
Ammonite displays a tag cloud of all of the tags on your disk, with the font size weighted by how many times the tag is used. You just click on tags to drill down, left clicking includes only files with that tag, and right clicking excludes files with that tag.
Also of interest to me, Ammonite indexes and searches DEVONthink databases (and is compatible with the latest v4 of DEVONthink). It can open results in DEVONthink, preview them internally, or even replicate groups of search results into new groups. Ammonite also indexes Obsidian vaults.
You can even create tag hierarchies by tagging like “Publisher>Oreilly” to create a Publisher top level, and an Oreilly subtag. I use my own tag hierarchy system with colons to separate, which works great in Spotlight but not so much in Ammonite. I wish it allowed you to specify the splitting character so my years of tagging like “Publisher:Oreilly” would have paid off in this app.
Ammonite can be run as a Dock app or as a menu bar app, and you can assign a shortcut key to open the search panel. I launch Ammonite manually, though, and run it as a Dock app.
Side note: the developer of Ammonite and GoToFile is soma-zone, and every single one of their apps is useful. I mention LaunchControl a lot, as it’s the best way to manage launchd jobs. I’ve never mentioned BackupLoupe before, but I use it all the time — it’s a way better way to interact with Time Machine backups than Time Machine itself.
Leap
Leap is another tag-based search app. It allows you to drill down with more of a file browser than Ammonite, and is excellent for actually doing the tagging, with great autocomplete and ratings support. It has the same tag cloud view as a pane on the left.
One very nice feature of Leap is that it backs up tags and ratings. Tags are pretty solid these days, but Finder can still lose the metadata in some cases. Leap keeps your tags safe. It also has a handy feature that allows you to show related documents based on tags.
Leap has been around for a long, long time, and I’ve had a license since back when we had to use Open Meta tagging because Finder didn’t have tagging support. It’s been updated relatively recently, and continues to be a great solution if you use tags for file management.
Trickster
Trickster is for finding recent files. It lives in your menu bar and pops up with a shortcut, and the window is detachable and pinnable. It has customizable filters for different file types, locations, names, and you can even filter by tags.
If you want quick access to files you just downloaded, or were working on in one app and you want to open the same file in another app, Trickster is perfect for you. (It’s great for opening the Markdown file you were just editing in your text editor in Marked.)
I have Trickster assigned to Hyper+Z.
Default Folder X
Default Folder X is a utility I’m always running. It adds a bunch of functionality to Open and Save dialogs on macOS. What I use most often is its expansion of submenus in dropdowns, but it also provides a Quick Search that can quickly locate just about any file or folder you’ve accessed recently, provided you know the name.
DFX’s Quick Search provides a “Search in Spotlight” option you can select if your search doesn’t reveal what you’re looking for. The results of the Spotlight search are shown in the Quick Search popup, as opposed to actually opening the Spotlight popup. It also has a few keyboard shortcuts for narrowing the search type, e.g. just apps, folders, or files. This makes keyboard-only searching really easy.
Hookmark
Hookmark isn’t technically a search app, but I frequently use it for easily accessing files I’m working on. Whenever I’m working on a project, I’m switching between documents by hooking them together with Hookmark, and then related files, websites, and OmniFocus tasks are just a shortcut away.
I have Hookmark assigned to Hyper+G.
Wrapping Up
These are my favorite search apps. I always want my files to be easy to find and access. HoudahSpot is my workhorse, and my first stop for most searching and tagging. Leap and Ammonite complement my tag-based filing system perfectly. Trickster, GoToFile, and Hookmark are great for recently-accessed or downloaded files and things I’m currently working on. Find Any File is so good at searching my Synology that I have no fear of archiving projects I’m no longer working on.
What do I actually use every day? I’m always running and using Default Folder X and Hookmark, but for searching I most often use HoudahSpot and Find Any File (for NAS searching) because of their more advanced query abilities. But I love all of these apps.
I hope these are useful tips for your own file searching. If you have any suggestions of your own, please add a comment to start a discussion in the forum!
Apps mentioned in this article:
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://brettterpstra.com/2025/05/02/mac-file-finding-gems