This page is written by Houdah Software, the developers of HoudahSpot. The developers of EasyFind (DEVONtechnologies) and Find Any File (Thomas Tempelmann) are colleagues in the Mac indie developer community. We're recommending their tools here because they genuinely solve problems our product doesn't — and honest guidance builds more trust than pretending one tool does everything.
The Key Difference: Index vs. Filesystem
All search on Mac falls into two categories:
- Index-based search: queries a pre-built database of file metadata and content. Fast — millisecond results. But only finds files that have been indexed. HoudahSpot, Spotlight, and Finder all work this way.
- Filesystem traversal: reads the actual directory structure on disk, file by file. Complete — finds everything readable. But slower, especially on large drives. EasyFind and Find Any File work this way.
Neither approach is better in absolute terms. The right tool depends on where the file might be and how much time you have.
When HoudahSpot May Not Be the Right Tool
File is on a drive not indexed by Spotlight
Spotlight is not supported on all file systems. The index is updated by macOS only. If you plug in an external hard drive and immediately search for files on it, Spotlight (and HoudahSpot) won't find them. Either you need to enable Spotlight indexing for that drive and wait for it to complete — or you use EasyFind/Find Any File to search it directly, right now.
File is in a system location Spotlight excludes
System volumes, some application bundle internals, and locations protected by SIP (System Integrity Protection) may not be reachable through the Spotlight index. EasyFind and Find Any File can often search these locations when given appropriate permissions.
You want guaranteed completeness
Index-based tools can have false negatives — files that exist but aren't in the index (recently created, in excluded locations, on unindexed drives). If you need to be certain you're seeing every matching file, filesystem traversal is the only way to guarantee completeness. This matters for things like security audits, data recovery assessments, or verifying a complete file migration.
Spotlight index is damaged and you haven't rebuilt yet
While waiting for a Spotlight index rebuild to complete (which takes hours), you can use EasyFind or Find Any File to continue searching your files normally. See troubleshooting for how to rebuild the index.
Hidden files inside app bundles
The inside of .app bundles (right-click → Show Package Contents in Finder) is technically accessible but often not fully indexed. If you need to find a specific resource file inside an app's bundle, a filesystem tool is more reliable.
EasyFind
Developer: DEVONtechnologies — the same team behind DEVONthink and DEVONagent.
Price: Free.
Available: DEVONtechnologies website.
EasyFind searches the filesystem directly — no Spotlight dependency. It supports searching by file name (with wildcards), file contents (text within files), and some file attributes. You can search for invisible files, locked files, and files inside packages. It's the right tool when you need to find a file that might not be indexed and you also want to search file contents.
The speed is noticeably slower than Spotlight-based tools for large drives, but it's reliable. On an SSD, EasyFind is fast enough for most practical searches.
Find Any File
Developer: Thomas Tempelmann — a veteran Mac developer well-known in the indie Mac community.
Price: Paid (Mac App Store).
Find Any File takes a similar filesystem-traversal approach but is optimized differently from EasyFind. It's particularly strong at searching by file name, extension, and file attributes on large volumes. Many users find it faster than EasyFind for pure name-based searches across large drives. It requires root access (or entering an admin password) to search locations protected by macOS security.
Find Any File is the tool to reach for when you need to search a large external drive or NAS quickly, or when you want guaranteed completeness with a clean, focused interface.
When HoudahSpot IS the Right Choice
To be equally clear about our own product:
- Metadata-rich searches: EXIF data, IPTC data, document author, audio sample rate — these attributes are in the Spotlight index and can be queried with HoudahSpot in milliseconds. EasyFind and Find Any File don't support this depth of metadata filtering.
- Large indexed collections: when you're searching thousands of files on your internal drive (which is indexed by default), HoudahSpot is orders of magnitude faster than filesystem traversal.
- Saved and repeated searches: complex query configurations you run regularly are much better served by HoudahSpot's saved search feature.
- Iterative refinement: adding and removing criteria live, narrowing down thousands of results step by step — this workflow is specific to HoudahSpot. See iterative file search.
Using All Three Together
EasyFind, Find Any File, and HoudahSpot are not mutually exclusive. They're complementary tools that belong in different situations:
- Day-to-day metadata searches → HoudahSpot
- Hidden files, unindexed locations, clean-up after uninstalling software → EasyFind or Find Any File
- Index broken, need to search right now → EasyFind or Find Any File
Many Mac power users keep all three installed. Storage space is minimal; the overlap in functionality is small; and having the right tool when you need it is worth it.