Drill down deeper

Deep search of your Mac’s files and folders

HOUDAHSPOT $34 From houdah.com

Features Deep search of Mac files and folders, search templates, text and file preview, AppleScript support

The macOS Spotlight search function is good but definitely has its limitations. HoudahSpot delves deeper, giving you more options for fine–grained searching of files and the content inside those files. Moving beyond its one–field search interface you get to a refined search where you can enter all manner of criteria for names, content, types, dates and more. You can also select not just locations to search but locations to exclude.

Your search results can be shown and sorted in a number of ways, and the results previewed from inside the app complete with file information. Text Preview lets you see and highlight text inside search results without opening documents and you can save search templates, handy for not having to re–enter criteria repeatedly. Power user features include automated searches using AppleScript and support for advanced queries in the search field.

Although Spotlight in macOS has improved over the years in how it lets you search for data, it can still be frustratingly ineffective in many ways. You don’t even have to be a power user — just knowing that you want a Word document from last year when you can’t remember the exact search terms can yield hundreds of files to wade through to find the one you want. Or if you’re really struggling to remember, no results at all.

Thanks to the more detailed and extensive terms available in HoudahSpot, you’re much more likely to be able to find those elusive files. It can really come to your rescue when you’re scrambling to find something.