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Searching on your Mac can be a little bit of a pain. The built-in search box for Finder is powerful, but if often searches for way more than you expected. The following are some search techniques for you to improve file search on macOS.
1. Use search operatorsWhen searching in the Finder search box, you can limit your scope by specifying file attributes with certain search operators.
Text operatorsThe operator is specified like so
kind:[
file
type
]
The file type can be almost anything, from a word like “document” to an extension like .docx.
Similarly, you can use the date operator to limit your scope to files of a certain date or recency. Using date:today will only search for files from today.
date:todayYou can further narrow your search by using the created and modified operators which accept an eight-digit date, like so:
created: 01/
02/
2003
modifier: 04/
05/
2023
Smart operatorsWe’re not only limited to text-based operators. We can also use a series of smart operators.
2. Search current folderBy default, Finder will search your entire system when you type in the search box. Set it to default to your current folder instead for more precise searches.
1. Open Finder’s preferences under the Finder menu.
3. Change the dropdown box to “Search the Current Folder” to limit your searches.
If you don’t mind putting in a little legwork ahead of time, you can make it easier to find important files in the future. Let’s say you have a variety of documents for your taxes, but they aren’t all in the same folder. If you set one of the built-in color tags to “taxes,” you can search based on that term and find files from anywhere.
Using TagsLater, you can search by the color or name of those tags.
4. Save searchesIf you make the same search regularly, you can save it for later as a saved search, which will appear in the sidebar.
Make sure that “Add to Sidebar” is checked to keep the search in your sidebar for later.
Expand with other toolsThese tips we’ve shown are just for Finder. You can expand your searching power with other tools. EasyFind will search through every file on your system, including system files. Path Finder is a Finder-replacement utility that includes powerful search and filtering tools. Alfred can search by file name instantly, with more power to expand than Spotlight.
Alexander Fox
Alexander Fox is a tech and science writer based in Philadelphia, PA with one cat, three Macs and more USB cables than he could ever use.
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