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by aikinai 913 days ago
For anyone looking for a Mac equivalent, there's GoToFile[0].

As far as I've seen, this is the only app for Mac that doesn't just reuse Spotlight search (which I find to be terrible). I looked for exactly this type of app for years before finding it, and when I did, it didn't seem real with the old-fashioned website and zero mentions on sites like HN. But I can assure that it works great and it's maintained. I just wish the author would promote it better so it gets more attention and isn't so hard to find.

[0] https://www.soma-zone.com/GoToFile/

4 comments

+1 on the need for non-Spotlight options. Source code makes a mess of spotlight for everyday usage. I like Leap a lot for multimedia browsing with more precise search capabilities than spotlight: https://ironicsoftware.com/leap/
You can remove folders from spotlight under "Spotlight Privacy". I removed my source code folders, which vastly improved search results.
100%. That's when I discovered I needed non-spotlight search to bulk search what I just excluded from spotlight.
Soma-zone software in general is pretty neat for Mac power users. I especially like Launch Control, which lets you configure and inspect launchd (the mac service daemon) services.
How does a program like this work? Is it indexing every file on the system and monitoring all events for updates?
Foxtrot Search (expensive) uses its own index and also indexes content, not just names

There are a couple of other filename-only apps with own index, but don't remember now which of the alternatives do that (HoudahSpot?)