Find files as fast as you can type.
AllTheThings keeps a live index of the folders you choose and matches names and paths as you type. It is a native Mac app, and nothing you search leaves your machine.
index
You choose the folders.
Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and Developer are indexed out of the box. Add or remove folders in Settings. Noise like node_modules, DerivedData, and caches is skipped.
live
Results update as files change.
Search works while the first index is still building. After that, fresh builds, exports, and screenshots show up in the results as they land.
local
Always private.
No cloud account, no analytics, and no collection of your searches or local file index. It indexes file names and metadata, not contents.
Each term narrows the results.
Separate terms with spaces to require all of them. Queries are case-insensitive and diacritic-insensitive.
psr- Fuzzy and acronym match, such as
PhotoSyncReport.final.pdf. redme- Small typo match for a filename like
README.md. *.swift*matches any run of characters and?matches one.ext:swift|md|separates alternatives.name:Search*.swift- Match a pattern against the file name only.
path:Sources ext:swift- Combine constraints. Path tokens and extensions stack.
package !path:node_modules- Exclude with
!or-. ~/Projects/**/*.json- Search below a folder.
**spans nested folders. "query planner"- Quotes match the exact substring, spaces included.
app:terminal- Search installed applications instead of files.
history:swift package- Search your own past queries.
Low impact.
An indexer runs all day, so it should stay out of the way. Over three months on a million-file index, background indexing averaged well under one percent of system CPU.
You can check for yourself. Insights reports how many files AllTheThings tracks, how much disk the index uses, how each search was routed, and how much CPU the app used. The Energy tab reports CPU share and wakeups for the last hour, day, or three months. The Activity tab charts searches and index updates by day.
Reach it from anywhere.
Two optional system-wide shortcuts, turned on in Settings, open the window over whatever you are doing. From the results you can open, reveal in Finder, copy files or paths, rename, preview, or move to Trash. Ghostty and iTerm2 users can open a terminal in the selected folder.
Every search is kept in a history you can browse and search, so a query you refined last week is one keystroke from running again.
- ⌘⇧SpaceOpen file search
- ⇧⌥SpaceOpen application search
Install
Download the disk image, drag AllTheThings to Applications, and pick the folders to index. Requires macOS 15 Sequoia or newer on an Apple Silicon Mac.
Keep it going.
AllTheThings is free. Sponsorship pays for testing across macOS releases and the maintenance that keeps a small tool dependable. Bug reports, reproducible test cases, and documentation fixes help just as much.