HoudahSpot 4.3

Turning up the Spotlight power

$29 From Houdah Software, houdah.com Needs OS X 10.10 or later The Mac’s Spotlight search engine has added lots of new features in recent years, but as a tool for searching your computer, it remains basic.

That’s where HoudahSpot comes in. It uses the Spotlight index but allows you to build searches using a variety of criteria and save them as templates, somewhat like Smart Folders. And it’s mighty fast. It comes with lots of prebuilt templates; new in version 4.2 is one that enables you to search for all video files of HD resolution on your Mac.

While HoudahSpot presents an interface that may seem daunting, selecting a template from the Templates menu quickly reveals the app’s power and ease of use. So, for example, choose Mail and you’ll see a list of search criteria in the left-hand sidebar. You simply fill in the ones you want to inspect and press “play” – it’s that easy.

Once you’ve pinpointed what you want, you can doubleclick to open it in the specified app; open it in another app; or tag, rename, copy, or move it. It’s powerful stuff.

The bottom line. HoudahSpot is ideal for anyone who craves more powerful searching than Spotlight in macOS.

HoudahSpot 4.3

Powerful search tools Can build custom search templates Very granular control May seem daunting at first

Excellent