Version History of Find Any File

For a complete version history of version 1, see here.

2.5, 07 Aug 24:

Adds a "Name without Extension" rule.

Adds verb "doesn't match RegEx" to the "Name" and "Text content" rules.

Renames verb "contains" into "contains phrase" for the "Text content" rule because that's how it behaves.

Changes the "Contains Words" rule: It does not consider an underscore ("_") as part of a word any more.

Removes the hidden "Name Ends With includes extension" preference since there is now a specific rule for that ("Name without Extension").

Holding the Option key with the search location popup menu open will now also show the System and Data members of bootable volumes. If you choose a "(Data)" volume as the search destination, it'll skip the original files installed by Apple, making the search faster. If you're searching only for files you created, this is a useful method to speed things up.

Adds "AppleScript" and "Executable" to the Kind rule.

Now shows a cloud symbol for offline files (i.e. those in iCloud).

New "File Server Settings" window for managing NAS and other network volumes.

New: Can now search on NAS and *nix server much faster by running the "find" command remotely. Requires a Pro license for testing (see website).

New: FAF now remembers the opened Find windows and restores them at the next launch. If you want to reload the saved default search instead, see the File menu for the shortcut to "Restore Default Search".

Volumes can now be hidden from the locations menu. See Hidden Volumes.

The popup menus for the search location, Kind and Label can now be sorted by holding down the cmd key.

The popup menus for the search location and the rules can now show the hidden (expert) items by holding down the Option key.

Adds expert rule Use 'find' tool (only useful with a Pro license).

Adds expert rule "Spotlight" to determine whether to include or exclude Spotlight.

Makes the "Scripts" rule visible without expert mode.

Removes the "Use SI units" setting from the Preferences window because it's hardly used any more. Still available as a hidden preference.

Adds menu commands for changing the Font size in the Results window (with cmd-plus and cmd-minus).

The Purchase menu can now be made visible with the Option key, even if the app is already registered.

Fix: A single click on a folder in the Path Bar at the bottom of the Results window now opens the folder in Finder, just like it happens in Finder's windows.

Fix: If a file name contains a Carriage Return (CR) character, it's now displayed as "␍".

The rules for Invisible, Package and Trashed items will now remove those items from the results instead of just hiding them.

Fixes an issue where, after trashing a folder with matched items inside, their new state being in the Trash was not correctly recognized.

Results now show the total file size when more than one item is selected.

Shift-Copy ("Copy Columns") in Tree view now adds a "depth" column, indicating the indentation level of each row.

New scripts for searching EXIF tags and finding duplicate (identical) files.

Adds some new script features, such as a new function to run shell commands asynchronously, allowing the use of the new "Duplicates" script.

It's now possible to install scripts directly from the website with a simple click on the "Install" button there.

Fix: Renaming a file is not canceled by automatic updates to the results any more.

Fix: When adding files to Results from clipboard, leading and trailing whitespace is now removed from the paths.

Licenses can now be purchased from inside the app.

When searching for file sizes, matching packages (bundles) are now shown if they're known to Spotlight and Spotlight results are included (see Preferences).

Too-long path names shown in the Results are now truncated in the middle instead of at the end.

When loading a recent search or from a .faf file, the frontmost Find window will now be re-used instead of opening a new window.

Fixes Open With to open the correct version if there are multiple of the same application.

When FAF is relaunched as root, it will bring itself back to the foreground (didn't work on macOS Sonoma).

When switching from Flat List view to Tree view, an existing selection is fully preserved and the selected items are all revealed in the folder hierarchy.

No more flickering of the results when files get updated in the background.

When found files get deleted, the selection and the "filtered" count are properly updated.

When a previously disappeared volume reappears, FAF should no longer freeze and should rediscover all found items on that volume again.

Saved .faf files do not add a "\" to every "/" any more (only on macOS 10.15 and later, though).

Folder size calculation is more reliable.

FAF has many advanced (hidden) preferences, which are now documented here.

Enables "Browse with BBEdit" menu item now only if selection includes text or plist files.

The first time a search on a QNAP NAS is performed, a browser window is opened with the link to https://findanyfile.app/qnap.html.

Fixes an issue on macOS 14 (Sonoma) when searching for text content on iCloud offline files: FAF did download those files from the cloud, which shouldn't be happening.

The expert rule "File Type UTI" works again.

Fixes the hidden "Tie Results window to Find window" preference.

Fixes a potential crash in Text Content search when using RegEx.

Now FAF detects when its app got moved and relaunches itself from the new location in order to avoid a crash later.

Fixes several issues around searching on Synology and Qnap NAS volumes with FAF's Spotlight option enabled. See these Synology and QNAP pages for details.

Improves Spotlight search speed - no more 2-second delays before the search is finished if it has finished quickly.

Improves VoiceOver labels for the items in the toolbar of the Results window.

Fixes a freeze that occured when searching a folder that contained more than 1000 matches at its top level.

Fixes an obscure crash in dealloc that plagues a few users frequently.

Adds better error reporting for a rare crash when searching for text content.

Improves Japanese translations.

Now uses Miguel Beijoca's Squircle icon as the default Dock icon for Big Sur and later.

Adds an IAP (Internet Access Policy) so that Little Snitch can explain to the user which web servers FAF contacts for which purposes.

2.4.1, 05 Jun 23:

Fixes a few crashes introduced in 2.4.

2.4, 31 May 23:

New: Scripted Rules allow for custom file matching with Lua or JavaScript code. This makes complex rules possible – see the website for useful examples.

New: If you have Default Folder X running, the pop-up menu showing the search locations will include DFX's Favorites and Recent Fodlers.

New: If you have BBEdit's Command Line Tools installed, you'll get two new commands in the Results' right-click menu (see above).

New: Rule File Content now looks inside zip files, including .docx (Word) and .xlsx (Excel) files.

New: Rule Comments to search for Finder comments (see Info window) aka "Spotlight Comments".

New: The context menu in the Results window now offers a Copy Paths command.

New: Unlock command removes the file locks (user & system) as well as any ACLs.

New: Rename command lets you rename files and folders in FAF's Result window. Use the menu or type cmd-E.

New: The … any of rules now allow entering multiple choices separated by returns instead of spaces, which enables you to provide a list of choices that contain spaces.

New: Adds is either of rule, in case one wants to find any matches for a set of specific file or folder names.

New: Found file names now highlight the matched part. You can turn this off in the View menu.

New: Files or paths in the clipboard can now be pasted into a Results window, adding them to the list in that window.

New: Adds Font, Folder, Directory, Alias and Symlink to the Kind rule, while removing (actually: hiding them as expert options) the now-outdated Is a folder and Is a Finder Alias rules.

New: Adds does not contain to the File Content search rule.

New: Adds Name begins with any of rule.

New: The popup menu with the search locations includes a Recent Locations menu that lists folders you had previously chosen for a search.

New: If you hold down the command key when double clicking on items in the results, they're not opened but revealed in Finder instead.

New: When saving results, one can now choose to include the rules for later reference.

New: The hidden preference "HotkeyActivationMode" controls what happens when the Hotkey is used: Value 1 will always bring a Find window to front, even if a Results window was frontmost. Value 2 will always make a "clean" (default) Find window or tab available.

New: Folder sizes can now be shown in the results by option-clicking the Preference option Calculate size of applications and packages. It will then show a dash (–) instead of a checkmark (√) to indicate this feature.

New: Japanese translation.

Change: Change: The Kind, Label and Script rules now let you choose any. With that, you can preset your search with these rules set to do nothing unless you change their value.

Change: The Path rule now matches on the entire path, not just on the item's enclosing path any more.

Change: When choosing the iCloud folder as a search location, FAF will search all iCloud related application folders, not just the "iCloud Drive" folder.

Change: When restarting in root mode (Find All) while there are still result windows open, the non-root app remains running along the root app so that the results aren't lost.

Change: The option Show Results Early won't display a blocking overlay during search any more (option-click on the preference checkbox to get old behavior back).

Change: By default, the "(Data)" volumes are not shown any more. Set the hidden pref "Volumes list mode" to 1, 2 or 3 to get them back.

Change: The rule File content has been renamed to Text content.

Change: The menu title "startup disk" is now "startup volume" because it's technically the correct term. (Do you find that confusing? Please let me know)

Change: The "Copy to JSON" menu command doesn't escape slashes any more (requires macOS 10.15 or later).

Change: The "(slow)" indicator for volumes is not shown any more by default as it's more confusing than helpful.

Change: When Tabs are enabled in Result windows, new results appear in another Tab instead of a new window.

Change: The Results menu has been re-arranged to better match the order Finder uses.

Change: The rules in the Find window have been re-arranged.

Change: The rule title "contains literally" is now called "contains phrase" in hopes of better understanding.

Change: When using the Filter in the Results window, diacritical marks are now ignored in the search unless the filter text uses them explicitly. For instance, a filter "a" finds both names with "a" and "à" in them, whereas a filter with "à" only finds "à" but not "a".

Change: The rules "Name ends with" and "Name ends with any of" will now optionally ignore file extensions. That means that searching for names ending in "week" will find "last week.docx" now.

Improves the way found files are passed by the "Pass to App" rule, making it faster and more reliable.

Improvement: File content search with regex now also finds unicode variants of accented chars and UTF-16 text.

Fixes a visual glitch in the Preferences window under macOS 13 "Ventura".

Fixes an issue where "Limit Folder Depth" didn't work with Spotlight enabled and some rules such as "Kind is Folder".

Fix: The rule Kind is Text now includes PDF files, as documented in the manual.

Fix: The rule Kind is not … for Video, PDF, Word & Pages, Spreadsheet and eBook now works correctly.

Fix: The rule "Kind is not PDF" works now.

Fix: The rule "Kind is not Video" does now correctly exclude video files.

Fix: Searching specifically the startup disk's Applications folder will now also find files inside /System/Applications/ on macOS 10.15 and later.

Fix: When performing another search while looking at the results of a previous search, the new Results window won't pop up in front any more.

Fix: Determining the Finder selection shouldn't stall FAF any more. (This used to happen whenever FAF was activated.)

Fix: Searching folders now properly skips excluded folders again.

Fix: The Dock icon won't clash any more with some other apps (such as Captin).

Fix: Reading .paths files now properly ignores comments and JSON lines, e.g. from Scherlokk.app.

Fix: Support for Chinese, Japanese, Korean (CJK): A full-width space character can now be used instead of the regular (half-width) space in the Find window to separate text fragments.

Fix: Supports searching Google Drive better when it's in "Mirror Mode".

Fix: Shift-Backspace for "Remove from Results" didn't work in Icon view.

Fix: No more ghost items when deleting found items, then recreating them.

Fix: When using the Results Filter on Dates, the month and weekday names only match at the beginning of the words now (before, filtering on "ar" would also match on any date in February, now you need to type "f" or "feb" etc. to match those dates).

Fix: Using the "Reset All" button in the Preferences window won't take many seconds any more.

Fix: "In Finder Selection" won't show duplicate names any more, and will not use an excessive width.

Fix: Hot Keys can be set to cmd-F again, provided the option "Works only in Finder" is checked.

Fix: Using Copy with the ctrl key ("JSON format") now writes the values for "dataForkSize" and "rsrcForkSize" correctly (they were switched until now).

Fix: Using Copy with the shift key ("Copy columns") outputs the size column as a plain number instead of using units (K, M, G), so that these values can be better used in a spreadsheet.

Improves the Toolbar in the Results window:

Shows narrower items with a pop-up menu if the space is too tight on macOS Big Sur and Monterey.
You can now customize the Toolbar (ctrl-click on it) and choose the older textual switches instead of the new icons.

2.3.2, 30 Dec 21:

FAF's icon in the Dock can now be changed to one better fitting Big Sur's Dock. To change the icon, ctrl-click on the FAF icon in the Dock. Note: Due to Apple's App Store limitations, the Dock icon will revert to the old icon once FAF is quit if you're using the version from the App Store. To have the Dock icon permanently show the new icons, you need to use FAF from the website.

You can now install custom Dock icons for FAF. See the FAQ entry for Big Sur.

The toolbar options for "Invisibles", "Package Contents" and "Trashed" are now using symbols instead of text in order to use up less space. If you hover over the icons with the mouse, you can still read their meanings.

The notification and sound options when nothing is found from FAF version 1 are back. See the Support page.

Makes the blue and red texts in the Find window better readable when using Dark Mode.

The "Deleted Items Remain Visible" menu option is now always enabled, even if there's no Results window open.

You can now choose to re-use the same Results window in repeat searches by changing with prefs key "Tie Results window to Find window" (use my Prefs Editor.app for that).

Adds search rule for "inode" (only visible in Expert Mode - see manual).

Fast search can now finally find multiple hard links for the same file, just like it always worked in slow search mode.

FAF Hot Key setup now prevents single keys from being used for the Hotkey, but they all require either the cmd, option or ctrl modifier now (exception: F-keys can be used without modifier as a hot key).

Fixes "fafapp://find" schema to work with the "date within the last …" rules.

Opening a .paths file that contains missing items will keep showing them if the menu option "Deleted Items Remain Visible" is checked.

Now the entire Find window and the bottom area of the Results window can be used to move the window around with the mouse.

Fixes an issue with showing duplicate items when a macOS update has been downloaded but not installed yet.

Adds rule for ignoring diacritics in file names, so that searching for "uber" will find "über", too.

Results now show the file names as they appear in Finder, including translated names and hidden extensions. To see the original (native) file name, either hover with the mouse over the name or use the View menu command "Show Untranslated File Names".

Searching for localized file names (e.g. "Bibliothèque" for the Library folder in French) now works if the Spotlight option is checked.

Resolves an issue with self-updating FAF when running on macOS 10.11 (El Capitan).

When viewing results in Icon mode, moving the selection with the cursor left & right keys now wraps around the rows' ends.

The Help menu has now Show Log and Open the AppSupport folder commands.

Fixes automatic resizing of the Find window's height when using multiple Tabs with different number of rules in them.

Fixes all reported crashes, freezes and other issues.

2.3.1, 14 Jul 21:

Fixes a problem with finding items "on startup disk" on macOS Catalina.

Fixes several issues with running on macOS 10.11 (El Capitan).

Fixes a bug where nothing was found on volumes with accented chars.

Fixes getting the Finder selection for folders on network volumes.

Fixes a crash when trying to delete an item on an ejected volume.

If a file name is changed, FAF will now refresh the list with the correct sorting if necessary.

After a failed Retry for trashing or deleting items, an error message is now shown.

In Big Sur and later, the Search field for the results now changes to the "?" icon if the window it too narrow.

The "Special Folders" lists paths to unavailable folders again.

Applications can now be added as Special Folders.

2.3, 16 Jun 21:

FAF is now a universal app (runs natively on both Intel and M1 Macs).

Adds new rules to search for Tags, Date Last Opened and Date Added.

Date Last Opened and Date Added can now be shown in the Results window.

Brings back the ability to search only the Data volume on Catalina and Big Sur system volumes (e.g. for better performance).

FAF can be invoked from other apps (Alfred, Keyboard Maestro, PopClip etc.). See here.

Improves checks and warnings when deleting folders with their unseen content.

Slightly improves search performance.

Invisible volumes can be chosen to be searched by enabling "Expert Mode" or by holding down the Option key when opening the disk popup menu.

Resolves some Big Sur (macOS 11) related issues.

The darkened overlay with the "Stop" button in the Results window during search can be disabled by option-clicking the "Show Results Early" preference.

The Kinds rule adds Packages (useful for excluding bundles and apps from a folder-only search).

Fixes issues around using the Spotlight search option; e.g. the "Path" rule didn't work.

Fixes context menu operations on the Path Bar (that's the row of folders at the bottom of the Results window).

Fixes selection of items in "Preview Grid".

Fixes issues around determining the current Finder selection.

Fixes rare a stalling issue when checking for Login Items.

Fixes search for "Name matches pattern *".

Fixes readability (contrast) issues in selected results.

Fixes a few potential crashes.

2.2.1, 12 Nov 20:

Fixes a potential crash.

The Find window isn't getting excessively wide any more.

2.2, 10 Nov 20:

Major changes

Change: Bootable volumes do not appear as (System) and (Data) any more, but only once, like they appear in Finder. Searching will, if necessary cover all members of a volume group.
New: Holding the Shift key while choosing a volume from the popup menu will add the volume. That should make it easier to select multiple volumes for searching without having to resort to drag & drop.
New: Brings back version 1's option to suppress (the rather slow) fetching of preview icons on network volumes. See the View menu for the option.
New: Adds more choices when searching for "Kind".
New: Can now save (cmd-S) and re-open results to ".paths" files (which are plain text files). You can even drag a .paths file or even any other number of files into a Results window to merge them.
New: You can remove selected items from the Results window with the "Remove from results" command. Together with the previous feature this allows you to create your own result lists and perform operations (e.g. Select All, then Move to Trash) on them quickly.
New: Adds rule "Pass results to file", which saves the paths to a file without showing the results in a window. Hold down the option key to see that rule when clicking on the popup menu.
Fix: When searching for file content, the app won't slow down and freeze the system due to high memory use any more.

Minor changes

Dragging an item from FAF's results to the Dock's Trash bin will now trash the item.
If you choose "inside:" in the volumes popup menu and then cancel the dialog, the previously chosen "inside" folder(s) will be used instead of reverting to the startup volume.
You can now drag & drop folders and volumes (disks) onto FAF's icon to search in them.
The toolbar items in the Results window can now be customized (as usual, with a right-click into the toolbar area).
The popup menu for choosing the volume will now show the selected Finder folder under "In Finder Selection".
Now uses the PCRE2 regex engine (previously: TRE), providing more features, being more stable and faster.
Now opens a Find window is there are none open and the app is activated.
Saved searches (.faf files) can now use the tilde (~) character to specify the home folder.
Rephrases "… either of" to "… any of".
Fix: Hiding FAF or closing the Find window won't stop the search any more.
Fix: Searching for file name starting with "-" does not cause a slow search any more.
Fixes issues with hiding contents in the Trash.
Fixes the rule "Kind is Video"
Fixes searching for regex content with Spotlight enabled.
Fixes an issue searching for Symlink files.
Fixes "In Finder Selection" on macOS Mojave and later.
Fixes several potential crashing issues.

2.1.1, 10 Nov 19:

Icons in Preview Grid should look correct again.

Does not remove Volumes from Login Items any more.

2.1, 9 Nov 19:

New: Includes Spotlight results, leading to faster finds if "Show Results Early" is also enabled.

Fixes a critical issue where searching entire volumes could miss some items, especially on fast network volumes such as Helios AFP servers.

Fixes some Spotlight search issues on Synology NAS volumes (called Universal Search there).

Searching for text content with non-latin characters (such as the Cyrillic script) does not freeze the app any more.

Several fixes and improvements around searching in "root mode".

The manual (see Help menu, "Documentation") has been much improved, explaining the search options in more detail.

Changed: The Edit commands "Copy" and "Copy Names" have been exchanged to match the Finder's commands better, now called "Copy" and "Copy Columns".

Fixed: When using the Service "FAF: Search Folder(s)" from the Finder, the search doesn't start on its own any more.

Fixes a crash when searching for dates.

English wording for some search rules has been updated to match Spotlight's.

File names are again painted in their Label colors as it was in version 1.

Brings back version 1's ability to search for Owner ID and Group ID (hold down the option key when clicking the "Name" popup).

Fixed: After moving or deleting files, FAF now always updates the results accordingly, even on network volumes.

Fixes a crash when sorting the column showing the full path.

Fixes a crash when using "Make Invisible".

Fixes searching "in Finder selection".

Brings back all Services in Context menu, like in version 1.

During QuickLook, using the cursor keys doesn't close the window any more.

Fixes sorting of Kind column.

Completes missing localizations in French, Spanish and Portuguese.

2.0, 6 Oct 19:

Important for macOS 10.15: You have now two volumes to select from for searching your startup disk: One is called "Data", the other "macOS System". The former searches all your own data, whereas the latter searches the protected files provided by Apple, like the System folder and Apple's applications. If in doubt, choose to search "on local disks".

New: FAF is now a 64 bit application, ready to run on macOS 10.15 and later.

New: The preference "Show Results Early" lets you see found items immedialety, instead of having to wait until the search is finished.

New: A "Kind" rule lets you search for image, video, audio, text or plain-text files.

New: A "File Type UTI" rule lets you search for file types, expressed by their UTI code such as "public.font".

New: File Name and Content searches now let you specify a regular expression (regex, grep) pattern.

New: "Save As Defaults" now has a keyboard shortcut (cmd-opt-S).

New: Everyone can now add or replace translations more easily: Place the translation's ".lproj" folder into "~/Library/Application Support/Find Any File/" and FAF will automatically find it if your chosen system language matches it. New translations, including Croatian (thanks to Alen Bajo), can be downloaded from here.

Changed: Removed translations for Norwegian, Swedish and Czech from the app because they're rarely used and cause me too much work to maintain them all. You can add them now again manually, see above.

Changed: Web links are now pointing to findanyfile.app instead of apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile.

New hidden preferences (use my app Prefs Editor to set them, or use the Terminal command `defaults write ...`)

"Size shows Finder units" - NO: v1 style, YES: Finder style.
Copying 1000s of items to the clipboard can be made faster if you only need the text, not the actual file references (which are only needed for pasting the actual files somewhere). Set the app's "Copy includes file references" preference to NO.

Apps

by Thomas Tempelmann

Find Any File (FAF)

Key Features

Links

New in version 2.5:

Version History of Find Any File