What is the Best Desktop Search Engine on Mac OS X?

[MisterMe]

[

I want to find all the MP4 files I have on my computer. I want a real search engine not a toy search engine. A person who is really searching isn't looking for one file they are looking for may be 100. I found a bunch of MP4 files but they would not go into the folder I wanted them to. Then I opened up another folder and but couldn’t find the files. Then the files I wanted disappeared. I tried to open "all files" but couldn’t find it.

If I want to look for text files that means to me ms word files I don't have time to search through php files. I may be looking for the string "evidence based" and although it is there they can't find it because they don't look that deep. I can set up special searcher but I lose some of the flags every time and going through preferences is reticules. .

How do I make spot light a real search engine or where can I get one. Maybe there are all sort of great things about spotlight that never found with spotlight as it now stands it is a joke. Does anyone know who to make spotlight work most like a real search engine?

Is this a trick question?

To find all of the MP4 files that my Mac has immediate access to, I follow three simple steps:

1. Click the Spotlight icon.
2. Type ".mp4".
3. There is no Step 3.

In OS X Yosemite, I now have a window with all of my .mp4 files and only my .mp4 files. I am at liberty to do with them whatever I want.

Or am I missing something?

 

[monokakata]

I want to find all the MP4 files I have on my computer. I want a real search engine not a toy search engine. A person who is really searching isn't looking for one file they are looking for may be 100. I found a bunch of MP4 files but they would not go into the folder I wanted them to. Then I opened up another folder and but couldn’t find the files. Then the files I wanted disappeared. I tried to open "all files" but couldn’t find it.


If I want to look for text files that means to me ms word files I don't have time to search through php files. I may be looking for the string "evidence based" and although it is there they can't find it because they don't look that deep. I can set up special searcher but I lose some of the flags every time and going through preferences is reticules. .


How do I make spot light a real search engine or where can I get one. Maybe there are all sort of great things about spotlight that never found with spotlight as it now stands it is a joke. Does anyone know who to make spotlight work most like a real search engine?

I just tried out HoudahSpot and was so impressed that I bought it. It searches exactly the way I want to search, and what's better than that? You ask about ms word files -- just for fun, I told HoudahSpot to search for files with the extension .docx and within a couple of seconds it had a few hundred for me. I thought that number was way too small, so I looked again at the search pane and realized I'd left a word in "text content contains" that I'd been searching for on the previous search. I removed it and immediately HoudahSpot found 2,398 docx files for me and it was also easy for me to see where they were.

Download the trial and see for yourself. It might be what you need.

 

[robgendreau]

I guess flamestar was venting. But I also prefer HoudahSpot's interface over even the Yosemite Spotlight interface. I think he was having trouble with the Finder, not Spotlight per se, hence the stuff about moving the results.

 

[michaellevitt]

Can someone please point me to a great desktop search product on the Mac?
It does not matter how much it costs, as long as it matches the capabilities of the X1 Professional Client that is available on Windows.
http://www.x1.com/products/professional-client

The lack of a great desktop search engine for files and outlook email on the Mac is the only reason why I still use Windows 7 under Parallels. I have all the file system on the OS X side, but I still use the X1 Desktop search to index the content of the files and the Outlook PST files. I already have Outlook and Office 2011 on the Mac, but without a great desktop search, that is pretty useless.

I would love to get rid of Windows because of battery life, but without a great desktop search engine on OSX I still need to stick to Windows just for the X1 search.

 

[michaellevitt]

Hi BigMacDuck, Did you ever find an OSX replacement for X1? My feelings, total for how you felt about all Mac alternatives in 2011.

Many thanks, Michael

 

[flamestar]

Spotlight?

 

[flamestar]

Spotlight sucks. Like I only want to see at most three word files. Or if I want to look only in word I have the same command line structure I used thirty years ago. Every time I search have to go into preferences and change the kinds of files. Moreover most of the files are useless like html files which couldn't possibly be what I am searching for. Every useless file extension comes up befor jpg or doc. It is beyond awful but just suppressing competition.

 

[monokakata]

I've been on HoudahSpot for a while now, and I love it. It's exactly what I wanted. Give it a try, Flamestar.

 

[Bigmacduck]

Hi BigMacDuck, Did you ever find an OSX replacement for X1? My feelings, total for how you felt about all Mac alternatives in 2011.

Many thanks, Michael

I am using HoudahSpot and I am very happy with it. With the possibility to save search templates it became very powerful and I no longer miss X1 on the Mac. My dilemma is now that I would like to get HoudahSpot on Windows

 

[robgendreau]

Spotlight sucks. Like I only want to see at most three word files. Or if I want to look only in word I have the same command line structure I used thirty years ago. Every time I search have to go into preferences and change the kinds of files. Moreover most of the files are useless like html files which couldn't possibly be what I am searching for. Every useless file extension comes up befor jpg or doc. It is beyond awful but just suppressing competition.

I grant the interface lags in favor of cuteness, but you don't have to do this.

The settings in Sys Prefs only list exclusions to searching, and what appears in the result window. And that applies to just a text search for say "apple." If you want to just get the Word docs with "apple" in them then search on {kind:word apple}. Or emails: {kind:mail apple} (removing parentheses). It's easier to do within a Finder window, since you have dropboxes to add criteria, and there are tons of criteria. Like all images created in the last week with the keyword "Apple" for instance.

 

[flamestar]

Spotlight?

Spotlight is not a search engine and anyone who thinks it is hasn't the faintest idea of what a search engine is. If I had a search engine I could look up all the articles I wrote about George Bush mishandling 9/11 by entering a string of words like "George Bush mishandled". Spot light only looks for titles and once it had a hit in a text file it starts looking in other files like music and pictures. You have to go into preferences for you to only pull up text files but then you be pulling up php and html files. Then if you want to specify word files you have enter them specially. Usually different kinds of files come up guaranteeing that most of them are wrong. I probably will have to further document the failures of spot light but at times I have a title of a file in one window and enter the exact title in spotlight and it can't find it because spotlight assumed I was looking for music files.If it only searches for titles it is no a search engines and it is has to be jury rigged through some complicated procedure it is not a search engine either.

 

[flamestar]

I grant the interface lags in favor of cuteness, but you don't have to do this.

The settings in Sys Prefs only list exclusions to searching, and what appears in the result window. And that applies to just a text search for say "apple." If you want to just get the Word docs with "apple" in them then search on {kind:word apple}. Or emails: {kind:mail apple} (removing parentheses). It's easier to do within a Finder window, since you have dropboxes to add criteria, and there are tons of criteria. Like all images created in the last week with the keyword "Apple" for instance.

 

[flamestar]

If I do it in the finder window then I can't look in certain files. Listen to you self If you want to just get the Word docs with "apple" in them then search on {kind:word apple}. Or emails: {kind:mail apple} (removing parentheses). Is that how a real search engine works? I put in {kind:word meat} and got no response. I put in {kind:word Bush}and got no response even though I have have at at least a 100s articles mentioning George Bush. I have dozens with "Bush" in the title. When I put Bush in the finder window a list of files came up. Only one had the word "Bush" in the title. The title was "Bush increase the budget." So there is an example of spot light missing a search. They said no results for "Bush" in Spotlight while the finder window found one file but missed dozens more.

 

[robgendreau]

If I do it in the finder window then I can't look in certain files. Listen to you self If you want to just get the Word docs with "apple" in them then search on {kind:word apple}. Or emails: {kind:mail apple} (removing parentheses). Is that how a real search engine works? I put in {kind:word meat} and got no response. I put in {kind:word Bush}and got no response even though I have have at at least a 100s articles mentioning George Bush. I have dozens with "Bush" in the title. When I put Bush in the finder window a list of files came up. Only one had the word "Bush" in the title. The title was "Bush increase the budget." So there is an example of spot light missing a search. They said no results for "Bush" in Spotlight while the finder window found one file but missed dozens more.

You missed the point. If you add a criteria like kind=Word then it ONLY looks in Word files (not the word "Word") if that criteria is in conjunction with say the text you're searching for, like "kind=Word AND contains=Bush". And yes, that's how real search engines work. Spotlight is searching a database of info that it has already indexed NOT the documents themselves. Google does the same thing with the Web. That means that the documents have to be searchable, and if they are proprietary the developer has to provide a means for Spotlight to index those documents. Conversely if the file doesn't have a means to be indexed, it can't be found by Spotlight. And many documents that seem to have text don't, like PDF saves of web pages (they're images, not text).

Additionally, note that when you do a Finder search you're using Spotlight. Just a different front end and means of entry of search terms. You should get the same results. If you're not, something's borked and you should probably rebuild your Spotlight index.

 

[BillyPreach]

Can someone please point me to a great desktop search product on the Mac?
It does not matter how much it costs, as long as it matches the capabilities of the X1 Professional Client that is available on Windows.
http://www.x1.com/products/professional-client

The lack of a great desktop search engine for files and outlook email on the Mac is the only reason why I still use Windows 7 under Parallels. I have all the file system on the OS X side, but I still use the X1 Desktop search to index the content of the files and the Outlook PST files. I already have Outlook and Office 2011 on the Mac, but without a great desktop search, that is pretty useless.

I would love to get rid of Windows because of battery life, but without a great desktop search engine on OSX I still need to stick to Windows just for the X1 search.

I came across this forum from a web search and wanted to jump into this conversation. I have recently jumped from Windows to OS. I was using X1 search and now in great need of something similar to it.

This is how I used the X1 search program...
I search for a "word" or "word phrase" through 1000's of books either on my desktop or in a cloud service. These books are in word doc. format or pdf's. X1 would search in real time displaying my results in list form also, giving me on the same screen a view of that document I clicked on from the list. I did not have to open the document, I could read the whole document right there on the search screen. I also could copy & paste from that document. Even if the document was a pdf X1 would find the "word" or "word phrase" within that pdf.

I hope I am making since to anyone who reads this. SO...my question is "Is there a app or program that functions this way I could use on my new iMac?

 

[ourladysfiat]

Spotlight is not a search engine and anyone who thinks it is hasn't the faintest idea of what a search engine is. If I had a search engine I could look up all the articles I wrote about George Bush mishandling 9/11 by entering a string of words like "George Bush mishandled". Spot light only looks for titles and once it had a hit in a text file it starts looking in other files like music and pictures. You have to go into preferences for you to only pull up text files but then you be pulling up php and html files. Then if you want to specify word files you have enter them specially. Usually different kinds of files come up guaranteeing that most of them are wrong. I probably will have to further document the failures of spot light but at times I have a title of a file in one window and enter the exact title in spotlight and it can't find it because spotlight assumed I was looking for music files.If it only searches for titles it is no a search engines and it is has to be jury rigged through some complicated procedure it is not a search engine either.

[doublepost=1453117524][/doublepost]

Spotlight is not a search engine and anyone who thinks it is hasn't the faintest idea of what a search engine is. If I had a search engine I could look up all the articles I wrote about George Bush mishandling 9/11 by entering a string of words like "George Bush mishandled". Spot light only looks for titles and once it had a hit in a text file it starts looking in other files like music and pictures. You have to go into preferences for you to only pull up text files but then you be pulling up php and html files. Then if you want to specify word files you have enter them specially. Usually different kinds of files come up guaranteeing that most of them are wrong. I probably will have to further document the failures of spot light but at times I have a title of a file in one window and enter the exact title in spotlight and it can't find it because spotlight assumed I was looking for music files.If it only searches for titles it is no a search engines and it is has to be jury rigged through some complicated procedure it is not a search engine either.

Did Flamestar ever find the search engine he was looking for? I need to search all my files and document in my Apple and in my portable hard drive. When I had a PC, I used Archivarius, which was awesome and very easy to use! All I had to do is put all the volumes, books, articles, etc. that I wanted to search in the database of Archivarius and it would search any word or phrase I needed and in lighting speed would come up with that word or phrase in all the documents I put in its database. The database would remain and I could easily add or subtract volumes, articles or books as I wanted or needed. Is there anything like that for my Apple. I do research on most 36 volumes and also some related books and articles....so I need something for searching my Apple, not the internet! Can you help, please! I have to go back to a PC to do any searching I need to do and I am tired of that. I want to use only my Apple! Thank you for any help!

 

[rotorb]

I came across this forum from a web search and wanted to jump into this conversation. I have recently jumped from Windows to OS. I was using X1 search and now in great need of something similar to it.

This is how I used the X1 search program...
I search for a "word" or "word phrase" through 1000's of books either on my desktop or in a cloud service. These books are in word doc. format or pdf's. X1 would search in real time displaying my results in list form also, giving me on the same screen a view of that document I clicked on from the list. I did not have to open the document, I could read the whole document right there on the search screen. I also could copy & paste from that document. Even if the document was a pdf X1 would find the "word" or "word phrase" within that pdf.

I hope I am making since to anyone who reads this. SO...my question is "Is there a app or program that functions this way I could use on my new iMac?

I really want to switch to Mac now that the M1 hardware offers such power savings. I just searched and it appears this app still doesn't exist. Is that right?

Houdaspot is a nice front-end for Spotlight, though I'd have no problem formatting my queries as a text string. The issue is the way the results are presented, as BillyPreach set out clearly. Has nobody developed an app that isn't merely a frontend for Spotlight but actually displays content, along with search terms highlighted?

 

[Apple_Robert]

DuckDuck Go for the win. I would stay away from Google.

 

[Ironman226]

Spotlight?

Try to find a content of a file which is present multiple times. The result will display the file without number of occurrences.

The best one for developers on Macs is the search feature of the Atom app.

 

[prometheus12]

It will also, optionally, include an index (but not actual file content) of any file anywhere on your computer - say in the system area.

- m

FoxTrot Professional rocks. I have a HoudahSpot license as well but stopped using it as it was so unreliable given that it only leverages Spotlight indexes and many times I would not be able to find content in files even if there were files matching.

How do you set up FoxTrot Professional to so file search only across the computer? Do you add the HardDisk root to the index and deselect all options for file types to search contents in? I'm using version 7.5 btw.

 

[ignatius345]

I think you want Alfred. It uses Spotlight's index, but it also has a TON of customization options. I very often use it to search for words within files and it does that beautifully. Beyond the desktop, you can also configure it to perform site-specific web searches, run terminal commands and scripts, and a lot more. It's more or less the first thing I set up on a new Mac. Spotlight pales in comparison.

 

[prometheus12]

I think you want Alfred. It uses Spotlight's index, but it also has a TON of customization options. I very often use it to search for words within files and it does that beautifully. Beyond the desktop, you can also configure it to perform site-specific web searches, run terminal commands and scripts, and a lot more. It's more or less the first thing I set up on a new Mac. Spotlight pales in comparison.

I know about Alfred. I'm specifically looking for Find in Files functionality. Alfred is yet another wrapper over Spotlight indexes when it comes to searches. FoxTrot doesn't rely on Spotlight like Find Any File.

Prefer LaunchBar to the antiquated Alfred interface btw.

 

[ryan101]

Hello, I have been a Mac user for many years, about 15 plus years now.

I am looking for an advanced search app that is beyond Finder or Spotlight search that is natively built into Mac OS. I have found various names through research and online forums. I have shortlisted two:

1. Foxtrot Search
   vs
2. Houdah Spot

I wanted to check with the members here as this community is probably one of the biggest online for Apple users. Please let me know if any of you have used either both or one of these products and your thoughts on it.

With both products, especially with Foxtrot Search, I like that it searches for the mention of the search word within the document and then highlights it every time it is mentioned. From what I understand, Foxtrot Search builds its own Index. I don't believe Houdah does.

Houdah similarly highlights search terms but seems to be less advanced. There are few reviews on Foxtrot Search, but their online forum seems active. They seem to have a loyal fan of users. However, when I landed on their website, it looked dated and not updated in years, almost like a one-person app developer who needed more time to do marketing and PR. Here, Houdah seems, at least in appearance, a more polished product with several mini-products they sell, and they have done a lot of online marketing and are also at a much lower price point.

Any advice or thoughts would be welcome.
Thank you.
Ryan

 

[ryan101]

Just a quick update: I have decided to go with Foxtrot Search for now. I have been trying the Pro version for 30 days; Itter at searching seems to be bet than the others I tried. I am now looking for an app to organise lots of photos in Apple photos. Photos Workbench from Houdah is one I am considering.