Tools

Finding files

Find Files is Total Commander's Alt+F7 search: by name, by text inside files, by size and age, with the results ready to work with in a panel.

Press ⌥F7 or ⇧⌘F. The search starts in the active panel's folder. Find Files is a separate window: you can keep working in the panels while it searches, and results appear as they are found.

Search fields§

Search in

The folder to search. Subfolders are included when Subfolders is on.

File name

A mask such as *.pdf or *.jpg;*.heic. A word without wildcards finds names that contain it. See Masks.

Containing

Text inside the files, read as UTF-8. Leave it empty to search by name only. Without Case sensitive, upper and lower case match each other, accented letters included (Ž finds ž).

Archives

Look inside archives also finds files and folders inside ZIP, 7z, RAR, TAR and the other archive types by name, size and date. Double-click such a result to open the archive as a folder with the file under the cursor. Text inside archives isn't searched, so the option is off while Containing has text. Encrypted archives are skipped, and Feed to Panel lists only the files outside archives.

Options

Subfolders, Hidden items, and a choice of Files and folders, Files only or Folders only.

Limits

Size at least and at most, in KB, and “modified in the last” number of days. Empty fields mean no limit.

Spotlight and text in pictures§

Spotlight index

Uses the Mac's Spotlight index instead of reading the disk. Results are almost instant, but only for places Spotlight indexes, so external disks and excluded folders may be missing.

Text in images & PDFs

With text in Containing, also reads the text in PDFs and recognizes text in pictures on your Mac (OCR), so you can find a scanned receipt or a photo of a whiteboard. This is slow for many images.

Describe what you are looking for§

On a Mac with Apple Intelligence, type a plain description into Describe, for example “PDF invoices from this year over 1 MB”, and click Fill In. The on-device model fills in the fields below. Check them, then click Find.

Working with the results§

• Go to File shows the selected result in the active panel, with the cursor on it.
• Feed to Panel puts all results into the active panel as a list, like Total Commander's “Feed to listbox”. Mark, copy, move, pack, rename or delete them there as in any folder. ⌫ returns to the folder.
• Stop ends a running search; the results found so far stay.