Find Any File

The current version at the Mac App Store is 2.3.2

I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. I've been using a Mac since 1986. Maybe it's me, but I hardly EVER use Spotlight. It seems the few times I use Spotlight each month, I never can find what I'm looking for, and find tons of shit I'm NOT looking for. Find Any File just works. It finds stuff that I can't find with Spotlight. Again, maybe it's me. Is there a "trick" to making Spotlight work? FInd any file is only 8 bucks. It's worth it.

Excellent. In general, FAF is much more thorough than Spotlight. Also FAF is quite fast and efficient in its searching.

love it. my go to search util now. has 'hidden' features using option key, & worth learning some other identifiers -- developer super responsive. worth paying for!

Most of the time I use Spotlight rather than Find Any File, since Spotlight is faster. But if I want to find things that Spotlight doesn't index, Find Any File is essential. For example, recently I wanted to search a folder for all files containing the character string " bin" (i.e., bin preceded by a blank). Spotlight ignored the blank and found many files containing "bin", which were precisely the files I *didn't* want to find. In contrast, Find Any File found exactly what I was looking for. As a follow-up test, I told both Find Any File and Spotlight to search the same folder for files containing "bin". Spotlight found some but not all of them, and Find Any File found all of them.

Find Any File is a must-have utility! I've been using it for years and consequently have never had to bother with the awful macOS built-in search function. Find Any File is faster and more accurate without needing to index whole drives of files.

Super app. Able to do everything, while comfortable, pleasant and almost free! I recommend it against the use of expensive programs.

Really fast and efficient for ANY file on the internal disk and also on the externals. Very cheap for a good job. Thanks to the developper

This is a great little application, I find it vastly superior to the OS searches and happy it's 64-bit for the time when I do go Catalina. Well worth the $6.

What is the purpose of Find Any File when Finder is already installed on my iMac? Thank you.

I like this app a lot. I see it is 64 bit. I haven't gotten Catalina yet but if I do eventually, I hope this and my other favorite apps will work.

Totally indispensable and my goto finding app. Congrats on the 64-bit update! No small accomplishment.

Great app. And, I'm confused now... the developer says "Version 2.0 is a 64 bit application, ready for macOS 10.15 Catalina. However, my System Report (from OS 10.14.6) shows this app as a NON-64 Bit App that will not work with Catalina. Has anyone upgraded yet and determined IF this app actually does or does NOT work with Catalina?

Great, fast little application and now 64-bit, excellent.

download link is for V1.93, a 32 bit version.

Good for APFS drives; not so great for HFS(+) drives. I end up using both EAsyFind and Find Any File because the latter is slower on HFS drives.

…Addendum: A request to the developer. When copying and pasting the size data in bytes from the Info pane in Finder (to look for files of byte-for-byte identical size, for instance), the dot(s) (as, in, "1.832.745.521 bytes", for instance) don't automatically get parsed (if that's the right term), into a format that Find Any File recognises (i.e., don't get translated into a dot-less format), thus necessitating a manual deletion of the dot(s) on the user's part. When working with large quantities of files, deleting every dot in the search bar becomes a bit of a chore. Another suggestion would be to expand the scope of search options with more criteria, such as "file type" (i.e., a document, an image, an audio or a video file, an email, a PDF, etc.), rather than only "Is / Isn't a Folder" alone. Other than these two shortcomings (that I can think of out of My head), the app is very useful and well implemented!

A very useful utility that works to expectation. One thing I needed it for in particular (I'm sure, this app's utility is vastly greater than the purpose I availed of yesterday, and I believe, I'll utilise its other features soon, as well) - is listing all the invisible files across a number of subfolders (a few hundreds) in a certain folder. I tried free alternatives - iFileX would crash even before the Ui would pop up. Relaunched the app a few times - same story. Uninstalled. Tried EasyFind: the app does not allow to choose to include or to exclude extensions or even specify that the files I'm looking for, should have names starting with a ".". I wonder how they got to version 4.9.3 without incorporating such basic features. Tried HoudahSpot in demo mode, as I had bought a license (which turns out to be long expired) in a bundle a few years ago: this one has the function, but it doesn't work! Shows no results. Tembo - same story as the EasyFind, just in a slightly better interface and it isn't free: the property is missing altogether. Went back and bought a Find Any File license - the best utility of the kind for macOS bar none! Much more reasonably priced than the ridiculously overpriced HoudahSpot, as well. Highly recommended! The search results window may, at first sight, look a bit basic, but it does have drag-and-drop support (plays well with the Finder and 3rd party apps!), Quick Look, various View Options, item count, an option to include or exclude hidden files, etc. 5 stars out of 5! No reservations in recommending it!

The one star in this review is just to counter the hyped-up anti-EasyFind reviews here. No doubt that Find Any File finds (almost) everything on a hard drive.

Howevver, in all of my about 10 tests in which I ran EasyFind and Find Any File next to each other both applications finished almost simultaneously, being not even a second apart.

And, guess what - Easyfind found in ALL searches exactly one file more than Find Any File. Why? Because Find Any File does not include the little "faf" files that it creates for each search in its results. I don't know about anybody else but in my book that clearly and indisputably means that it does not find "any" file, just "almost any" file.

One other thing: Although I had in my searches defined that I do NOT want to have package contents included in the results Find Any File showed them initially in its results, making me initially belief that it had indeed found more files than EasyFind. I actually would not rule out that the Find Any File maker wants this to happen so that his (not free) applications looks better than the (free) EasyFind.

Here some of my search terms: teamviewer, indesign, carbon, splashtop, lazy, solar, nzb, xls. All searches were done on a "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" hard drive; I can not say how the applications compare on APFS drives.

Conclusion: The free utility EasyFind finds as many files as as the not so free utility Find Any File; both utilities search with the same speed.

I've used and loved EasyFind for years, but Find Any File leaves it in the dust! It's more than10 (Yep, ten!) times faster and offers multiple GUIs as opposed to EasyFind's one, its results are dynamically configurable, and it even shows trashed items in real time. I asked EasyFind about an update e few months ago and was told that it was coming but was very low priority; I just trashed it. Goodbye, old friend.