#Find Any File FAF for apple download pdf#

“As the administrator for about 50 school Macs, I often need to look for some file misplaced by a novice or, while troubleshooting a system, I often need to search for obscure operating system files. “FAF goes where Spotlight's can't easily reach.” Instead, Spotlight is still the best tool for those file (whose results can be enhanced with Tembo and HoudahSpot, also available in the App Store).

#Find Any File FAF for apple download pdf#

It lets you view the found items within their respective folders, making it often much easier to browse through 100s of found items.įAF can not search file content other than plain (unformatted and RTF) and zip-compressed text (as used by Word for instance) - and even that is comparatively slow, so don't expect this to be a good replacement for Spotlight when you need to find text in your documents.įor searching text in Mails, PDF and similar files, FAF won't be of use. This lets you search for file properties such as name, creation and modification dates, file size, even plain text inside files.Īnother useful feature is its hierarchical results view (see screenshots). those inside bundles and packages, and inside system folders that are usually excluded from Spotlight search.Ĭontrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead searches the data on disk directly. You can even search on disks that are not indexed by Spotlight, including network server (NAS) volumes.įind Any File can find files that Spotlight doesn't, e.g.

Uninstall software that leaves files in hidden places where Spotlight doesn't look?įind Any File (FAF) is the perfect tool for these tasks.Find all the largest files on your disk?.See what files got changed in the past 5 minutes?.Recover a file whose name you partially remember?.By file name, date, size, and even plain text content (including RTF, Word and Excel files, but not PDF files nor Mails – see note below).

Unhappy with Spotlight because it does not find files that you know to be there? Use FAF to find every file on your disks, including those usually hidden.