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Find Any File (FAF)

Key Features

• Convenient folder and icon views for results
• Can search in other users' home folders ("root" mode)
• Searches can be saved for easy re-use
• Can be launched with a self defined keyboard shortcut

Version History of Find Any File

1.0, 26 Dec 08:

First release

1.0.1, 27 Dec 08:

Fixed date entry crash on PPC

1.0.2, 29 Dec 08:

Move to Trash works now; volume selection is observed with root search and saved searches; results update after moving items.

1.1, 13 Jan 09:

Can now also search on non-HFS formatted disks; added checkboxes to filter hidden items and bundle contents; hovering with the mouse over an item shows more information about it; new "Delete Immediately" menu command; search for size does not find folders any more; last used window settings (size, view options) are now preserved for next search; new application icon; a few bugs fixed.

1.1.1, 18 Mar 09:

Works around a bug in Mac OS 10.5.6, preventing it from searching the same network volume multiple times. Also preserves its window positions between launches.

1.1.2, 31 Mar 09:

No more warnings in the Console about the data not being "proper UTF-8".

1.2, 11 May 09:

The hovering tooltip in the Results window can be dis-/enabled via the menu (View->Hide Details or Show Details); Files can be dropped onto the search forms to set name, date, size, creator and filetype codes; Changing search criteria between modification and creation date does not reset its value any more; Enhanced display of file sizes; Sorting is retained when the Show hidden and Show package contents options are changed; Search can now even be saved if no valid criteria was entered yet; Text in lists can be made bigger via the View menu; Added option to search remote volumes only.

1.2.1, 13 May 09:

Fixed a potential "Nil Object" crash (inside FoundItem.Exists) that was introduced in v1.2.

1.3, 1 Dec 09:

New features: New name criteria: "Begins with" and "Ends in" - the latter being especially useful to find specific file extensions. Saving a Search provides choice whether to autorun it or not. Added a "Window" menu to the menu bar. Added automatic online check for program updates via Sparkle (Many thanks to Charles Yeomans for making these features, i.e. Window menu and Sparkle, freely available in REALbasic). Sorting choice in result windows is now remembered. Bug fixes: No more occasional endless beeping and freezing during extended searches. Makes sure windows do not disappear any more after switching to a smaller monitor. When dragging items from Results list, their outlines appear now correctly. No more "double free" messages in Console Log.

1.3.1, 2 Dec 09:

Bug fix: No more growing fonts in the date fields on PowerPC Macs (G4, G5) running Leopard (10.5.x).

1.4, 23 Dec 09:

New features: You can now search for recent changes (i.e. dates within the past X minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years). You can now tell when you're doing searches as Root (Find All) by looking at the menu bar's app name or at the name in the Dock. Bug fixes: Newly opened windows do not cover existing windows any more. Opening a .faf file does not lose "Name" criteria any more from the leftmost popup menu.

1.4.1, 3 Jan 10:

Bug fix: Works on multiple accounts again.

1.4.2, 4 Jan 10:

Bug fix: The position and size of Result windows is again remembered (broken since v1.4).

1.5, 20 Dec 10:

New features: Search inside a folder of your choice instead of entire disks. Some criteria (name, date and size) can now be repeated for combined conditions. New name criteria "does not contain". Added Quick Look (only works on Mac OS 10.6 and later). New Get Info command to have the Finder show an item's Information window. Sizes can now be entered with units, e.g. 10MB (supported units are: k, m, g). New menu command Save As Defaults remembers the current Find criteria. New Preferences window, where various options can be chosen. Preferences window offers a Reset button to clear all previously made settings (is practically identical to deleting the preferences file). Removed the criteria Negate conditions because it caused confusion and is hardly ever used (if you need it, contact me – there's a secret switch for it). If no items are found, the Results window does not open any more and a beep sound is played instead. Command-F quickly brings you back to the Find window if a Results window is frontmost.

Bug fixes: Date searches "within the past" work now with certain other combinations (such as "Name ends in" and "Name begins with"), same for "is folder is false" and for searching for dates on PowerPC Macs. No more internal errors when dropping a file onto the input fields for name, type file, etc. Text looks better now on Japanese systems. Made the field for entering dates a bit wider. Improved positioning of windows (avoiding overlaps and remembering previous positions). No more unsorted results after a fresh set of preferences. Double clicking multiple results now opens all selected items instead of just the one clicked on.

1.5.1, 9 Jan 11:

Bug fix: Searching for file sizes using units (e.g. "10 MB") works correctly if searching inside just a folder or using combined criteria.

1.5.2, 4 Feb 11:

Special version for Mac & i
Bug fix: Searching for names with accented characters (e.g. umlauts) works correctly if searching inside just a folder or using combined criteria.

1.5.3, 24 Mar 11:

New features: Localized to French and German. Lots of little user interface improvements.

Bug fixes: Much more responsive when slow network volumes (iDisk) are mounted. Fixed all other reported issues.

1.5.4, 3 Apr 11:

Bug fix: Sorting of dates works again (got broken in 1.5.3).

1.5.5, 5 Apr 11:

New: Localized to Italian.

1.6, 15 Jun 11:

New: Hot Key: You can now define a shortcut to launch FAF. Spanisch localization.

Bug fixes: OSX's internal volumes "net" and "home" aren't getting listed any more. "Move To Trash" and "Reveal In Finder" work now with non-Roman file names such as Japanese.

1.6.1, 17 Jun 11:

Bug fix: Hot Key works now on PowerPC Macs including OS X Tiger.

1.7, 29 Nov 11:

Specify multiple disks or folders for a single search.

Filter results (only in flat view, not in tree view).

More columns in results list (creation date, folder name, path, label).

Shows Finder labels by color, similar to the Finder.

Can search the current Finder selection.

Showing a large amount (several 1000s) of found items is much faster now.

Find window is more responsive during search of entire disks and on network volumes.

No more crash when copying paths with more than one selected item.

Searching only on local or remote volumes works again as expected.

Searching for Aliases fixed.

Hotkey fixes: Loads saved defaults even if option key was part the hotkey presses; Works again on OSX Tiger

1.7.1, 8 Dec 11:

A progress bar is now shown whilst updating the results list.

FileVault volumes are searchable again.

Sorting is case-insentive again.

Sorting remains intact when columns are re-arranged.

Modified files don't appear as <item has disappeared> any more.

FAF doesn't freeze any more if "Move To Trash" failed with an error message from the Finder.

No more crash (NilObjectException) after deleting files.

No more occasional crash (ThreadAlreadyRunningException) when updating the results list.

1.7.2, 12 Dec 11:

Sizes of apps and other bundles (packages) are now getting shown in the results.

New preference setting to turn off the new app size calculation in case they cause performance issues.

New preference setting to re-enable the restoring of previously set Show... settings in the Results window.

Doesn't show disappeared items and unrelated network volumes at the root of the hierarchical view any more.

1.8, 24 Mar 12:

Name matches pattern: Lets you enter wildcards. Use "*" as a "don't care" placeholder. Examples: Looking for "*.pdf" finds all ending in ".pdf", looking for "Invoice*2011*" finds all that start with "invoice" and thereafter contain "2011".

Name contains words: Matches only file names that contain the given word(s). E.g. looking for "mac" would find "Mac OS.pdf" but not "Macintosh.pdf". You may enter multiple word in one line, separated by spaces.

Case sensitive: If set to "Yes", the case of entered names is matched for the search as well.

Label: Find specific labels. To find all items with any label, use "Label - equals - None" along with "Negate conditions - is true".

Pass Results to <application> and Limit Amount: Passes the found items to the specified app instead of showing them in a window.

Folder Depth: Limits the search depth (also forces a "slow" recursive search).

It's possible to limit the search to visible, non-package and non-trashed items. When performing a "fast" search, these only set the display options, while with "slow" searches they actually avoid hidden folders and contents of packages and the trash, which makes "slow" searches faster, especially on network volumes.

Open With .... Works even with folders - you can open the folder in Terminal.app with it, for instance.

Labels can be set and cleared.

Make Visible and Make Invisible. Note that this works only with items whose names do not start with a period (".").

Items that are in the Trash can be hidden from the results.

The Copy menu command on found items works now like the Finder's. For instance, you can then perform “Paste” in a Finder window to copy the files into that folder.

The Date criterion offers two new shortcuts for "today" and "yesterday".

The Add Choice button offers a menu for choosing the to-be-added criterion.

The Save menu command can be used in the Results window, too.

Slight performance optimizations when showing results from a network volume (icon and kind are now updated slightly delayed, making scrolling more fluent).

FAF doesn't take 30 seconds to launch any more on some Macs

Remembers the "show invisibles" and "show package contents" options again if chosen so in the Preferences.

Changing font and row height works again in Results window.

Doesn't prevent disks from being ejected after a search any more.

Creation date column shows the actual creation date instead of the modification date.

File times are now precise instead of being offset by a few minutes depending on the time zone.

Now restores columns that were accidentally set to zero width.

1.8.1, 2 Apr 12:

File times aren't off by 1 hr any more if they had a different daylight savings state.

Searching on PGP volumes (and possibly other special volumes types) works again.

Input field has correct width if prefs option "Increase Input Fields Height" is checked.

1.8.2, 11 Apr 12:

Searching for Creator and FileType codes works now in complex (and folder-specific) searches.

1.8.3, 26 Apr 12:

Automatically restores columns in Results window if they got messed up.

French text "Traitement des données" corrected.

1.8.4, 08 Jun 12:

New: Portuguese localization.

New: "Open Recent" menu to re-open previously performed searches.

New: Pressing Option or Command key while clicking the "Add Choice" button does not show the menu but adds a new choice immediately, like in pre-1.8 versions.

Bug fixes.

1.8.5, 12 Nov 12:

Now excludes the files saved as Recent Searches from the results.

The collection of Recent searches can now be cleared and also entirely disabled in the preferences.

Copying results to the clipboard now includes all columns (separated by Tab characters), unless Shift or Option is held down when Copying.

Using Select All in the hierarchical view does not select the interim folders any more but only the actually searched items.

Can now search for the size of resource forks (available only in expert mode)

By adding an item named "FindAnyFile" to your keychain, containing an admin user's name and password, FAF won't ask for your login any more when doing Find All.

Find All can now be made the default by issuing this command in Terminal: defaults write org.tempel.findanyfile AlwaysFindAll -bool YES

Fixes an issue with resizing columns directly after adding a column to the results list.

No more crash when opening a saved search (.faf) using the File/Open menu command.

No more crash when righting clicking on the path at the bottom of the Results window and then not choosing any of the options.

Improves sorting by paths by not taking the file name into account any more.

Adds Norwegian, Swedish and Czech localization.

1.8.6, 26 Nov 12:

When using Quicklook, cmd+O now opens the viewed item.

Speeds up searching on network volumes, especially in "(slow)" mode (SMB, NAS).

Hidden files and folders now appear with a dimmed icon.

No more crash ("Runtime Error") when the "Recent Searches" folder or another searched folder is not readable.

Corrects filtering of hidden items when using the "Invisibles" show/hide/only options.

1.8.7, 1 Oct 13:

Supports Macs with Retina displays.

Search box in Results window now also works in hierarchical (tree) view.

The "Reveal" command works with Path Finder if it's set to be the default browser in its preferences.

Prevents accidentally deleting network files in FAF that had just been moved by the Finder (formerly, FAF did not refresh its lists for network volumes, and so would keep showing files in their old places, suggesting that the files were still there).

"Negate conditions" is now an expert option. To see it, you have to hold the Option (alt) key when clicking on the popup menu.

Adding additional search targets by dropping them with the Shift key held down now also works when a single volume is chosen so far.

No more crash when control-clicking into the list header to choose the shown columns.

"Special Folders" button in Preferences window allows permanent exclusion of volumes and folders from search, as well as suppressing "fast search" on problematic network volumes (certain NAS systems apply).

1.8.8, 20 Nov 13:

No more crash when using "Find All" on OSX 10.9 (Mavericks).

Shows new Tags instead of Label in OSX 10.9 (Mavericks).

Searching "in Finder selection" now also works if folder in Finder is open with nothing selected in it.

When nothing is found, a notification is shown (OSX 10.8 and later).

Dragging found files to a Finder window of the same volume moves them again.

Dragging a file into a search field enters the file's name again, not its entire path.

Does not consume excessive CPU time any more when showing results.

Prevents an occasional crash when moving items to the Trash.

1.8.9, 15 Mar 15:

File Icons are fully opaque again.

Makes sure windows appear on-screen when an external monitor gets detached.

Fixes an issue where refreshing the Results takes an unusually long time.

Solves an issue with OSX 10.10.2 where opening more than six items failed.

Fixes issues with deleting items on a network volume.

Fixes issues (lockups) with unavailable NFS network volumes.

Deleting symlinks doesn't instead delete their destination any more.

The shortcuts Cmd-Shift-C and Cmd-Opt-C work again.

Changing an item's Label removes all other Tags previously set on that item on OSX 10.9 and later.

Does not attempt to auto-mount NFS shares any more.

If the command "Delete Immediately" or "Move to Trash" fails, an error message is displayed.

Switching between flat and tree views now preserves the selection even if more than one item is selected.

When searching a "slow" volume, its name is displayed in the Find window again.

Fixes a few rare crash cases.

1.9, 3 Nov 17:

New: macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) support for fast search on APFS formatted disks.

New: "Preview Grid" view shows larger icons. Helpful when looking for images.

New: Searching for plain text content in files (experimental, please give feedback).

New criteria "contains either of" and "ends in either of" for a simple logical or search operation. Now you can search for all kinds of images using the term [Name] [ends in either of] [.gif .png .jpg .jpeg .tif .tiff], for instance.

New: Shows contextual help at the bottom of the Find window.

New: Can search for User ID and Group ID numbers. This is an advanced feature - to get these options, hold down the Option (alt) key when clicking the leftmost popup menu.

Change: "Name contains" is now doing a slightly smarter search: If you enter "day one", all files are listed that contain both "day" and "one", such as "stones today". If you want the previous behavior where the spaces need to match as well, use "contains exactly" instead.

Change: "Copy Names" command in Tree view always inserts TAB characters for indentation.

Fix: Right-click menu on found items uses the correct system font on OS X Yosemite and later.

Fix: Expand & Collapse commands now work in the right-click menu on the results.

Fix: Sorting in the results doesn't get stuck any more.

Fix: Does not crash when Trashing more than 2000 items at once.

Fix: "Copy" commands adds file reference to the clipboard so they can be pasted in the Finder.

Fix: Quicklook can be used if more than one file is selected.

Fix: The search field always offers all types (Name, Kind, Dates, Size, Path), even if they aren't shown as a column.

Numerous small usability fixes.

1.9.1, 6 Nov 17:

In rare cases, version 1.9 did not find all items when searching an APFS volume. This has been fixed.

1.9.2, 5 Dec 17:

Fix: The menu option Automatically Refresh can now be (un)checked at all times.

Fix: FAF does not require to be moved out of the Downloads folder any more.

Fix: Does not occasionally freeze on quit if "Calculate size…" is enabled in the Preferences.

Fix: The FAF Hotkey app gets removed properly on High Sierra when disabling the Hot Key in FAF's Preferences.

Fix: No more "Out Of Bounds" error when clicking past the last item in the Preview Grid.

1.9.3, 22 May 18:

Fix: Search option "Name equals" can now be performed "fast" on APFS volumes.

Fix: Applications can be chosen again when using "Pass Results" search option.

Fix: Preferences show again correct state for "Install Hot Key at Login".

Fix: Avoids rare crash around "accessibilityIsAttributeSettable" on macOS 10.13 and later.

Fix: Update checking works again on pre-10.9 systems.

Improved performance of showing file icons in "Preview Grid" view mode.

1.9.4, 5 Oct 19:

Several bug fixes since 1.9.3.

Backward compatible with settings and .faf files from version 2.