[traceroute66]

> searching for files

Erm, what ?

I use Mac, Windows, Linux and BSD daily.

Of all four, searching for files on a Mac is a dream.

Apple Spotlight is and always has been lightyears ahead of whatever garbage Microsoft use on Windows.

And don't get me started on the inconvenience of searching for files on Linux or BSD, I mean, for starters you have to download a non-default tool like `fd` if you want to search at any reasonable speed.

[eviks]

This just tells me you've never used they only file search dream - Everything search, unfortunately Windows only. Spotlight has never come close to that

[KineticLensman]

> Everything

I was going to say Everything was awesome as a file searcher except for its non-easily searchable name.

But when I checked in a raw Edge instance it was in fact the first result. Ho hum.

It's produced by Voidtools in case YMMV: https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/

[setopt]

> Apple Spotlight is and always has been lightyears ahead of whatever garbage Microsoft use on Windows.

I certainly agree on that, and I also find it more convenient than the desktop search options I’ve tried on Linux (there I usually drop to the command line to search).

But despite really wanting to like Spotlight, e.g. its integration with Apple Mail with email previews is great, I find it unusable for heavy work. I’ve tried customizing it to disable lots of search backends that I don’t need, but still for reasons I don’t understand, it sometimes takes 5+ seconds to process my search results before showing anything, and even the average search often takes a second and is not well-sorted.

In comparison, Alfred is always instant at searching on my computer, and I really prefer how you can explicitly tell it what you are searching for (e.g. `'filename`, `in file contents`, `=math`, etc.) whereas Spotlight tries to guess this and often guesses wrong. It’s also easier to customize if you want to integrate e.g. specific web searches in it.

I’ve tried Raycast since lots of people praise it, but I still find Alfred to have a nicer and more responsive interface, but perhaps it’s just what I’m used to.

[frereubu]

I think something is wrong with your Spotlight index if it takes that long. Recently something went a bit funny with my Spotlight that made it take as long as you're describing, but after a reboot it's pretty instantaneous as usual. I work with large numbers of files (tens of thousands per project, with about 40-50 projects) so I don't think it can be that. I'm pretty sure there are ways to rebuild your Spotlight index.

I haven't come across issues with ordering, but my use cases are usually pretty simple, so that might be down to a difference in our workflows.

[rubslopes]

I agree with OP, searching for files is awful. Many times it doesn't find a file I know it is inside a subdirectory of where I am right now.

Things got much better when I moved from Spotlight to Raycast.

[crazygringo]

Searching on my Mac's SSD is great.

Searching on my SMB network share doesn't work. At all. It's not just that Spotlight won't index it. It's that you can't even search by filename within the current folder you're viewing.