A file search app for macOS with a Liquid Glass interface, inspired by EasyFind from DEVONtechnologies. It searches the disk live, without Spotlight's index, so it finds what Spotlight skips: hidden files, system files, and anything that was never indexed. Runs on macOS 26 and later.
Note
FinderPlus is at the very beginning of development. Features and behavior may change from one version to the next.
- File and folder names, file contents, Finder tags, Finder comments and metadata — any combination; an item matches when any ticked field does.
- Files and folders, only files, or only folders.
- Contents covers plain text and source code, PDF, RTF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument (text, spreadsheets and presentations), EPUB books, and web pages without their markup. Files with unknown extensions are read if they look like text.
- Text in images: read the words in photos, screenshots and scanned PDFs, recognised on your Mac.
- Metadata: camera, lens, date taken and dimensions of photos; artist, album, title, genre and year of music; the owner and permissions of any file.
- Inside zip archives: list the files an archive holds, without unpacking it.
- All Words, Any Word, Phrase, Wildcards (
*.pdf,IMG_????), Boolean + Wildcards (*.pdf OR *.docx NOT *draft*, also&,|,!) and Regular Expressions. "quoted phrases"and-excludedwords in the word modes.- Ignore case, ignore accents (é = e), whole words only.
- Fuzzy matching that tolerates a typo in longer words, counting a swapped pair of letters as a single typo.
- A folder you choose (⌘L), or the folder shown in the active Finder window.
- Search with FinderPlus from any folder's right-click menu in Finder (under Services), or by dropping a folder on the FinderPlus Dock icon.
- All volumes, local volumes, removable volumes, a single drive, or iCloud Drive.
- Home, Desktop, Documents, Downloads and Applications, plus any folders you add — drop a folder on the options panel to add it.
- Choose whether to include package contents, invisible files, applications, and system folders
such as
/Systemand/Library.
- Modified today, in the past 7 or 30 days, or in the past year.
- Under 1 MB, or over 1 MB, 100 MB or 1 GB.
- Leave out images, video, audio or archives.
- Folders that are always skipped, such as
node_modulesor.git, set once in Settings.
- Results stream in while the search runs, already sorted; sort by name, location, kind, size, date modified or date created. The sort order is remembered.
- Each result shows its location; content and metadata searches show the matching text.
- A preview beside the results: the file's details, then either its text with every match marked or the usual Quick Look preview.
- Open, Open With, Show in Finder, Quick Look, Copy Path, Share and Move to Trash — from the toolbar, the context menu or the keyboard. Drag results into other apps.
- Copy To and Move To another folder, without overwriting anything already there.
- Rename the selected results in one go — find and replace, name-and-number, change case, or add the date — with every new name shown, and checked for collisions, before anything is touched.
- Export the results as a spreadsheet (CSV), or copy the selected rows as a table.
- Find duplicates among the results: files with identical contents, grouped into sets, with the space the extra copies take.
- A live count of matches and items scanned, and a shortcut to Full Disk Access when some folders couldn't be read.
- Recent searches, one click away in the search field.
- Liquid Glass: a glass toolbar, search field and controls over one even, translucent window.
- Several searches at once: ⌘N opens another window, each with its own query, options and results; merge them into tabs from the Window menu if you prefer.
- Searches start only when you press Find — nothing runs while you type or change options.
- A new search in the same place narrows the results already on screen instead of blanking them.
- Settings: what double-clicking a result does, asking before moving to the Trash, recent searches, full paths, the largest file to read, a limit on matches, folders to always skip, and whether Full Disk Access is granted.
- About FinderPlus (in the app menu, and as a tab in Settings): the version, who made it, and a link to the project on GitHub.
- Find Files and Find Duplicate Files actions for the Shortcuts app: search a folder — or return a folder's extra copies, keeping the oldest of each set — and hand the files straight to the next action, no window needed.
- Search in FinderPlus opens the app with the search already running; "Search with FinderPlus" also works as a Siri phrase.
- Updates itself from this repository's GitHub Releases: it checks once a day and asks before installing, or installs on its own if you choose that in Settings. Check for Updates… is in the app menu.
- Stable and beta releases. Everyone gets stable releases; turn on Receive beta updates in Settings to get betas as well, before they become stable.
- Every update is signed, and checked against that signature before it installs.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Focus the search field | ⌘F |
| Find | Return or ⌘↩ |
| Stop the search | ⌘. |
| Choose a folder to search | ⌘L |
| Show or hide the options panel | ⌃⌘S |
| Move from the search field into the results | ↓ |
| Open | ⌘O or double-click |
| Show in Finder | ⌘R |
| Quick Look | Space or ⌘Y |
| Copy path | ⌥⌘C |
| Move to Trash | ⌘⌫ |
| Show or hide the preview | ⌥⌘P |
| Export results | ⇧⌘E |
| Find duplicates in the results | ⇧⌘D |
FinderPlus needs no special permission to start. macOS asks for access the first time a search reaches your Desktop, Documents or Downloads folder, or a removable or network volume. Searching the Active Finder Window asks once for permission to control Finder.
To search everywhere — including other users' folders and protected system locations — grant Full Disk Access in System Settings → Privacy & Security. When FinderPlus opens without it, it explains what stays locked and takes you to that setting; Settings shows whether it is granted, and the status bar counts the folders a search couldn't read.
No telemetry, analytics, crash reporting or account. The only network request FinderPlus makes on its own is the daily update check, which fetches the release list from GitHub and sends nothing about you or your Mac. Everything it reads stays on your Mac, including text recognised in images. Content searches and duplicate checks skip iCloud files that aren't downloaded, so they never download your files.
./build.sh --install # builds build/FinderPlus.app, copies it to /Applications and launches it
swift test # the test suiteTo publish a release, push a version tag. GitHub Actions builds, signs and publishes it, adds it to
the update feed, and records the version in Resources/Info.plist on master:
git tag v1.2.0 && git push origin v1.2.0 # a stable release
git tag v1.3.0-beta && git push origin v1.3.0-beta # a beta, offered only to copies that opt inThe update feed is served by GitHub Pages from the gh-pages branch. To check a release before
tagging it, VERSION=1.2.0 BUILD=40 ./release.sh [--beta] builds the zip and the feed locally
without publishing anything. Releases are signed without an Apple Developer ID, so macOS blocks
the first launch: dismiss the dialog, then click Open Anyway in System Settings →
Privacy & Security — or run xattr -cr /Applications/FinderPlus.app. (Right-click → Open
no longer gets past Gatekeeper on current macOS.) Updates after that install normally.
Building needs Xcode. To change the app icon, edit Resources/Icon/make-icon.swift and run
swift Resources/Icon/make-icon.swift from the repository root before building.
macOS ties Full Disk Access, Automation and folder permissions to the app's code signature. An ad-hoc signature changes with every build, so without a fixed identity every update asks for them again. To keep them, give the release workflow a self-signed certificate, once:
- In Keychain Access, choose Certificate Assistant → Create a Certificate…. Name it
FinderPlus Release, set Identity Type to Self-Signed Root and Certificate Type to Code Signing. - Right-click the new certificate, Export it as a
.p12with its private key, and give it a password. - Store both as repository secrets:
base64 -i FinderPlus.p12 | gh secret set CODESIGN_P12_BASE64andgh secret set CODESIGN_P12_PASSWORD.
Releases are then signed with it; without the secrets they stay ad-hoc signed and the release run warns about it. Keep the certificate: signing with a different one resets the permissions once more.
Issues and pull requests are welcome — for a bug, say what you searched for, where, and with which options, since those decide what FinderPlus reads.
./build.sh --install # builds build/FinderPlus.app, copies it to /Applications and launches it
swift test # the test suite; CI runs it, and builds the app, on every push and pull requestBuilding needs Xcode and macOS 26. Keep to the style of the file you're changing, and add a test for behaviour you add or fix — most of the search engine can be tested without a window. Releases are made by maintainers, by pushing a version tag.
FinderPlus is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
Built by @kdbaustert.