Mac Basics: Searching For Files

[@SoNowWhat]

Gary - you never cease to amaze us with your depth of knowledge on all matters Mac. This is really useful stuff in this video. I'll be bookmarking this one for sure! Thanks for what you do.

[@Keith72360]

There is a reason why Gary is #1 with these tutorials. ALWAYS learning new things!!! THNAKS!

[@reallifelegend4781]

It took me a minute to learn that, but yeah I think I agree.

[@JimSiverts]

Apple should just link directly to you and save themselves a lot of effort. Great stuff.

[@7making]

Finally. An explanation of Finder. I'm always looking for my MacOS users manual.

[@misterwill3625]

🤯Wow! And just think, earlier today, I was complaining about Searching for files on my Mac. Now I'm amazed at the Search features on Macs😵Thank you. I'm following right along with you.

[@carolinemyddelton580]

So I thought I knew how to search for files-but I've picked up so much new, valuable information from this video, it's been a real eye-opener! As always, loads of super-useful tips; thanks, Gary!

[@FemaleObserver]

thankyou so much, we don't know what to do without you!!! Bless you, man!!

[@sriramprakashravichandran5248]

Always the best content in this channel. I knew nothing what was shown in this video. I have learned so much from this channel. Thank you again Gary.

[@rgarlinyc]

Thanks Gary , very helpful - I've been frustrated up 'till now with trying to figure out how to add search criteria!

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

keep coming back to this excellent tutorial

[@maysaraaljumaily]

Well done! I learned about the kind:pdf as windows uses *.pdf, the option of changing the default search of searching the current directory instead of the entire system, and Boolean search. Keep up the good work 😁!

[@ahmed_mahrouky]

I learn a lot from you , thanks a lot .

[@_TheFermion]

everything I search to do with macOS, I see your videos. Thanks for such great and helpful videos.

[@barbclark69]

Thank you. I always learn something new from your videos. Just got a new iMac with Sonoma and I assume all this applies to it as well.

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

wow that's an eye opener..always kinda struggled with finding a file

[@JamesFleming888]

Outstanding, this has just saved me a heap of work. Thanks!

[@bobcat6653]

Spotlight used to be useful, now it just looks pretty but is not so useful. This was a very well thought out tutorial, very useful for me Gary, thanks so much!

[@luckywetland]

Thank you so much, Garry. Could you please make a video about the difference between the file systems in Mac? Like which one should be set for the main storage inside of a Mac and which one is good for Time Machine backup etc. Thank you

[@umityayla5051]

Apple needs a guy like this !!

[@stavros808]

thanks a lot from Greece !

[@Liv4IT]

Pretty neat and precise thank you 😊

[@ciddrummond1881]

Really cool man! Thanks for sharing.

[@loisskiathitis8926]

Thank you, Gary! 👍🏻

[@raymondw.stevensjr.5756]

Hi Garry, I wonder if you can help me with a concern. I have a 27” iMac computer and using Quicken Premier. I have a company saving account with various stock purchases, I have hundreds of interest income payments and under category they’re listed as uncategorized is there a blanket way of changing the entries from uncategorized to income? Your assistance and macmost videos are much appreciated. Thank you, Raymond

[@drvoodoo3073]

I didn’t know about the Option key to get the 3 dots :)

[@zwurltech9047]

Great, super important!

[@Yash.027]

Hi Gary, I am unable to search Files (and contents within the files) that are in 'iCloud Drive'. They appear only when I select "This Mac" in Finder search, but when I select the "folder name", it shows no result at all. Could you please make a video on how to ensure that files in iCloud Drive folders become searchable? I admire your knowledge a lot and respect you for helping us on so many mac-matters !! Thanks.

[@macmost]

Files in iCloud Drive should be searchable. But if you use the Optimize function in iCloud Drive and the file isn't cached locally, then maybe not. That wouldn't be the problem for you since you say it works when you select This Mac. So I would contact Apple Support and they can walk through things with you.

[@garynagle3093]

Great video!

[@bafroggy]

amazing clear videos .Fabulous. I need your help please , today I created a word document which seem as completely disappeared from my MAC. Very strange . I was trying to set this document with a password. Could you please help me to find it ? I would immensely appreciate. Thank you

[@ebutuoy6701]

When I do a search in a specific folder it seems as finder doesn’t perform the search in the subfolders. Am I doing something wrong? 🤔 Anyway thank you for your videos, never encountered anyone as informative, simple to understand and nice as you! 🙏🏻

[@ProfFeinman]

This is the single most annoying thing that Gary’s does not mention and I cannot figure out. How do you do that?

[@ArisePeter]

Unlike Windows and Ubuntu, finding a file is very difficult in mac. In Ubuntu you can simple click inside the window and start typing file name and it will highlight the exact file. But in Mac when we type a later of a file name inside the finder window, it act wired. I don't know why they are not implementing a simple way to find a file. Thank You for showing some of the advanced file finding techniques.

[@macmost]

Perhaps you don't have the list sorted alphabetically? You can type letters and find a file in a list, but it always works alphabetically even if your list is sorted some other way.

[@ArisePeter]

@@macmost That I know but it needs some more steps right ! Anyway I have given suggestion to them as feedback. They have already implemented many of my previous suggestions. Thanks

[@gemzamala]

Is there any way to search - in finder? Bin not letting me delete files since a folder or folders are locked! I cannot seem to find anything about this in your channel. Would appreciate it a loooot if you can share this - THANK YOU

[@pianoconlatte]

Thanks for the booleans in uppercase.

[@bradleydavidgood]

you are amazing!

[@erfansyamsuddin5216]

thanks Gary

[@harryhellerman474]

Thank you.

[@shanedennis1487]

And I still can’t find, organize, sort, and/or edit a single file. I love MacOS as a daw, but that is all it is good for. The guide management is trash.

[@reallifelegend4781]

So I don't get a drop down menu when I type in the word project. And my window looks different than yours. I'm in list view, but when I enter the word project, there's no drop down menu, and the list begins with the word Folders and then lists folders, and then the word Documents and then lists a bunch of word files, then PDFs and so on and so forth.

[@robertklaassen2628]

How can I do a Search on a USB or an External SSD drive on an iMac M1 24-inch?

[@jackofnotrades15]

MacXpert Gary 😍

[@fahad90909]

The strange thing is that when I change the Finder setting to Current folder and I am in the documents folder it can not find the files

[@jovar7545]

Hello Gary, I find it alot of work to asign tags manually. So I stumbled about this program for windows called tabbles, in which you can autoasign tags to files in specific folders. I would find this function very useful. Is there a program or a way to do this? I thought maybe with hazel... Thank you very much. You are helping me alot with using my mac more efficiently!

[@macmost]

I don't know of any app that does this, but I have never looked for one. Not sure what it does from your description though. If you want to assign the same tag to a bunch of files in a folder, just go to the folder, select all, and assign the tag.

[@BrotherNick777]

Question: I cloned my HD and put the new drive in. When I now search for files by name , it doesn’t give me a full list of files that I know has the name in there. It only gives me a few files. What can I do to change/correct it to display all files with a certain name?

[@macmost]

Try reindexing spotlight.

[@shirazigs]

Hi Gary. Thanks for your nice tutorial. Finder doesn't work properly for me. For example in This Mac, I search "container" and psd or .psd the result is many files with different extensions. If I search "container kind:psd" the result is nothing. I've found Finder's search and its filter just kills my time. Have to seen this problem?

[@macmost]

Search for name:.psd to get files with ".psd" in the name.

[@shirazigs]

@@macmost Thank you, Gary. The result od the search is very clean. 🥰😘

[@Filtersloth]

something must have gone wrong with my Mac, because it will not find files that I'm looking for at all. even if I paste in the exact name, and only search in the same folder or folder above it. Is there any way to reset this? so frustrating also my spotlight searches have also recently become useless. I used to use it to quickly open apps, but now it just returns web results and takes minutes for the app to show up in the list. It used to take less than a second. It will also have the 'indexing' bar sit there at like 80% I've tried rebuilding the index, to no avail.

[@macmost]

Try rebuilding the Spotlight index. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qV7McmOEe6mhgc0

[@damienbastille4003]

I'm searcing for .psd files of which I have hundreds, yet only a very small selction shows up in my search when I type .psd in entire mac search. I originally tried the file names and still no show. I can't find any solution for this.

[@macmost]

did you try rebuilding your spotlight index? kzbin.info/www/bejne/qV7McmOEe6mhgc0

[@khongcolong]

You are my Mac_daddy! Lol😂. Thank you!

[@michaelsw0rd]

5:15. so what if you are looking for a file that has "wombat eating" because you know those two words are used together at sometime in one of the files, how would you select for another word to be included?

[@michaelsw0rd]

Reason why I am asking is because I am a dental student and have hundreds of saved PDF powerpoints with many slides of information. If i want to find all the slides that mention "immediate denture" (two words) how would I go about doing that? If I search "immediate denture" a bunch of PDFs will come up, but if i click into one of them to see where it mentions immediate denture I only see places that it mentions "immediate" and not "denture" after. How do I select to find both words together?

[@michaelsw0rd]

Just kidding! I figured it out. If I add quotations around the words like this "immediate denture" it will capture the entire phrase to search.

[@ProfFeinman]

I suspect their is a hard to find option to only search high level folders and that it sometimes becomes default for some users (I assume accidentally). Anyway, my command-F or other search methods does not find many folders with the search criterion. Only question I know that Gary hasn’t answered.

[@macmost]

It should search everything in the location that you specify. If it doesn't find something that is in that location, then there is a problem.

[@johnnythefox132]

I’m trying to get large movie files off my Mac but I’m having trouble locating them as I converted them direct from video camera, do you have any info as to transfer them to Hdd ?

[@macmost]

You just move them like any other files. But you have to find them first. Try searching for them by name, or do a search for files that are > a certain size.

[@johnnythefox132]

@@macmost ok thanks 🙏 I will try that

[@ViorelIanasi]

Any ideea why search is not working on Windows shares (Samba)?

[@macmost]

Not sure. Maybe not indexed in Spotlight? Maybe Samba doesn't work with it? I don't have any good way to test.

[@ulfgj]

if u have a tab open in finder already, the search opens in a new tab and can be closed wtih cmd+w. pretty nifty! BUT if u only have a window and no tabs open u can't exit out of the search with cmd+w cus u'll close the window. cmd+[ goes back in history, but it would be great to have Esc of cmd+f again to exit out of the search. anyone has an idea if there's a shortcut for this?

[@macmost]

The back button or Command+[ is a good option. I don't know if you can get any more succinct of a shortcut than that.

[@troyladoux1953]

When I use Finder and search for a word in a filename I don't get any results for the immediate folder even though I know there is a valid filename with that word in it. I don't even get the selection options; name, Tags, Kinds, etc like you get. Very frustrating. Running Catalina. I can get to that small down arrow and select Filename or Everything but zero results in the current folder. This is also a folder on an external drive. It seems to work better on the local drive.

[@macmost]

Have you by chance excluded that external drive from the index (System Preferences, Spotlight, Privacy). Or, is that drive formatted in a way that it can't be indexed (like for Windows).

[@gerdt.7106]

Great. Is there a simple for to search i.e for images (jpg and raw) taken in year x,y....

[@macmost]

Do you mean the file date? Or, do you mean the EXIF metadata in the photo? The first is easy, but the second requires that the photo be in the Photos app (or an alternative like Lightroom).

[@gerdt.7106]

@@macmost File date would help. Thanks in advance.

[@macmost]

@@gerdt.7106 Yep. You can definitely do that. Just select one of the date properties for your search. Set two: a before and after.

[@cyranox90]

How do you open the search window on a new tab? Where is the setting?

[@macmost]

It seems that if you have a window with only one tab open, then Command+F uses that one tab. If you have a window with 2+ tabs open, it uses a new tab. If you want a new tab and only have one tab open in the window currently, then a quick Command+T Command+F does it.

[@fahad90909]

Strange! If I leave the Finder default search to Search This Mac it find documents in my Documents folder but if I change the settings to the current folder and I am in my Documents folder it can not find the file! Not sure what I am doing wrong!

[@macmost]

Perhaps you have two Documents folders, maybe one in iCloud and one local?

[@fahad90909]

@@macmost that is correct (wow). So what can I do? And why is it a problem? When searching This Mac it find all in local and cloud drive.

[@macmost]

@@fahad90909 Just search in the right folder. If it confuses you to have two Documents folders, rename the one in your Home folder "Local Documents" or something like that. Or just move all of its contents into your iCloud Drive Documents folder and delete the now-empty Home folder Documents folder.

[@LarryFasnacht]

How can I do this kind of searching on an attached network drive?

[@macmost]

Use a Finder window to go to that drive, top level, and then start a search there. But I think you only can search for file names. It may depend on the network drive type and its capabilities.

[@LarryFasnacht]

@@macmost Okay thanks.

[@phanngocthinh1984]

I am using google drive app which is mounted in Macbook. Normally, I easily find any file in Gdrive storage by Finder even cloud or offline file but after update to Monterey, I cant do it anymore. So appreciate if you help me fix it.

[@macmost]

Not sure why it isn't working for you, sorry. Is Google Drive set to download everything to your local drive, or just as-needed? Maybe that's the issue. Or, maybe just try to rebuild your Spotlight index.

[@phanngocthinh1984]

@@macmost thank you, are you using that search file by finder normally. I did reindex spotlight but it was not resolved. I check setting in terminal, the google drive has been disable indexing, I dont how to make it enable again

[@macmost]

@@phanngocthinh1984 Check in System Preferences, Spotlight, Privacy and see if it is listed there.

[@phanngocthinh1984]

@@macmost finally I got solution, open Gdrive preference and choose syncing options to Mirror files replace to default option is stream file. With stream file option, Finder has not known all file as localhost (I don't know why they choose the way like that) but mirror option they were known as local file which this way we can search Gdrive file normally in FInder. In fact, instead of Finder, I used FE Explorer, it can search Gdrive on both options. Cons of mirror, You will be synced everything in Gdrive into device ==> I don't have a good option right now, because my Macbook storage can't have enough space and It is lost meaning of cloud services.

[@Richard-mq7wf]

not working for me. I can go to a specific area and search for a numbered file I know is in there and it won't find it. It never finds anything relevant that I search for. Usually just buried computer only files.

[@macmost]

Maybe rebuild your spotlight index? kzbin.info/www/bejne/qV7McmOEe6mhgc0

[@muneebwarraich4803]

No matter how many times i try my finder is not searching within folders

[@macmost]

In specific folders? Even if you start inside or just above those folders? Have you done a spotlight rebuild?

[@rw3452]

Dumb that you can’t just type .mp4 and see all video files in a folder as that never works

[@macmost]

You can. I do that all the time. I mean you'd see all .mp4 files, not all video files.

[@rw3452]

@@macmost it only worked on internal hd external hd I had to get into some deep changes in the bowels of the mac to get it to work.

[@jacktinga3581]

first

[@skela098]

Worst OS ever. How to search some files that are not cached in /Users/username? You cannot, only in Terminal, or paying for third party Finder (facepalm)

[@macmost]

Not sure what you mean. I search for files on my external drive (for instance) all the time.

[@skela098]

@@macmost Try to search for some file that is located within /Library part of OSX partition (lets say you need to access config file from one of your app). Spotlight doesn't have rights to search there, you cannot search with find from terminal (as it does not hare rights as well), only thing is to blindly scan directory per directory, or install Find Any File (or equivalent app), to be able to fully search your whole drive. External drives are mounted drives, and you can search them as Apple, in there wisdom, gave you the rights to search them, but not your install disc. On it you can only search /Users/.. /Applications and couple of other directories. One thing is to keep it secure, another thing is to close everything and expect for people to pay to user proper search.

[@macmost]

@@skela098 For me, it works if I go to /Library and search in the Finder. No need for Terminal. Yes, Library files don't usually show up in Spotlight searches. My guess if because they are so numerous and usually not what people want when they search (they want to see the files they created/work with). I agree it would be nice to have an option to indicate to Spotlight that you want results in the Library folder too. But then you kinda have that by just starting in the Library folder. Pretty extreme to call it the "Worst OS ever" over this one thing. You have high standards.

[@skela098]

@@macmost I do have high standards, especially as OSX is "buzzed" to be highest standard operating system, for last 2 decades. I'm using it on/off for 15 years. And it is not only one thing. Before Mojave search worked, you could configure Spotlight to search everything, and index everything. And you cannot, in any circumstance, be on defending side of Apple stupid idea of searching only what they want, and rationalized it with "people want to see the files they created/work with". For that you have Documents directory and do not need to search. If you would set up your mac as proper development machine (as quite big percentage of people do, we are not all just content creators/consumers) with kubernetis, few dev environments, then you would see how many annoyances OSX really have, how many "standard" features and configs have been, and are removed, with every new version... Network subsystem has bugs for almost 4 years now (crusing ad random, No wonder that proper developers are now mainly moving to Linux and Windows (Win was blasphemy just a few years ago),

[@gemzamala]

Is there any way to search - in finder? Bin not letting me delete files since a folder or folders are locked! I cannot seem to find anything about this in your channel. Would appreciate it a loooot if you can share this - THANK YOU