Mac Reviews

Find Any File 1.0.2 is a free program for Mac OS 10.4 and later that lets you search for files on your disks, primarily on HFS formatted ones.

Contrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead uses the file system driver’s fast search operations.

This lets you search for file properties such as name, dates, size, etc., but not for file content (use Spotlight for that)!
Find Any File can find files that Spotlight doesn’t, e.g. those inside bundles and packages and in inside folders that are excluded from Spotlight search (i.e. system files), and Find Any File is fast. Not always as fast as Spotlight, but faster than other, similar file search tools you might find for the Mac.

Features

Find Any File has a few hidden gems:

1. If you hold the Option key down while choosing Find, you are asked for an administrator password – and then Find Any File will restart with root permissions, being able to find really any file on your Mac’s volumes (something that Spotlight won’t do).

2. It sports a new hierarchical view for the found items. You can switch to it using Command-2 or click on the right little icon at the top of the results window.

3. You can save your entered searches to files (they’ll have the extension “.faf”). You can later open them again from within the Find Any File application, or you can double click them in the Finder – in the latter case the search will automatically start, unless you hold down the Option key while Find Any File opens the document.

Limitations

This tool’s design was inspired by the Classic Mac OS’ Find File application, hence its UI design might look a little old fashioned. And the Icons aren’t snazzy, either.

Using this tool on volumes that are not Mac (HFS, HFS+) formatted, including network volumes, may not work well – or even not at all. You’ll notice. This won’t change – it’s the nature of this program to depend on the efficient search operations designed for HFS volumes.

The user interface of this app gets sluggish when it’s performing a search. This is mostly out of my control, as this app is written in REALbasic, which has a rather unsatisfying multi-threading implementation.

Key Features:
• Can search as root user
• Saveable queries
• Folder view for results

New in version 1.0.2:
Move to Trash works now; volume selection is observed with root search and saved searches; results update after moving items.

System requirements:
Mac 10.4 or later

Freeware

For more information, visit:
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/