ProFind: the closest thing to Everything search on a Mac (a game changer)

tldr; if you want Everything search for Mac, try ProFind

The thing I miss the most about using a Windows machine as my primary computer is the search tool, Everything, by voidtools. I have millions of files comprising nearly 100TB spread across local storage and multiple network volumes, and Everything could return search results for filenames and folder names instantly (not an exaggeration). The screenshot above makes it look super basic, but in terms of productivity utilities, it’s at the top of my lsit.

Although I still use Windows machines for projects, I use a Mac for primary productivity. Unfortunately, Everything does not exist on Macs, and replacements are nearly impossible to find. A search for the topic yields many users who are desperate enough to run Windows in a virtual machine on a Mac just for Everything search (!).

Macs really want to use Spotlight for indexing and finding files, but in my experience, Spotlight fails as soon as networks are involved. I use QNAPs, and while there are paths to supporting Spotlight over AFP and even over SMB, I have not had success (possibly having to do with having too much data to deal with). Most third-party search software rely on Spotlight, so its uselessness in this area makes all the third party apps useless, too (also, the layperson marketing descriptions make it hard to figure out what the apps are supposed to be doing unless one actually tries them).

Last month, I finally found and tried ProFind, and after a month of use, I find it to be as close to Everything in functionality and performance as anything I’ve ever used on the Mac. ProFind can index and cache arbitrary volumes on any schedule, and can search with filters (e.g., “find all folders with ‘tiger shark'”). It’s not nearly as fast as Everything is (a super high bar), but it’s fast enough if caches are used. ProFind is a game changer in my use of Macs, and it really does make me feel complete.

Here are some other Mac search apps I evaluated:

• FoxTrot Search – looks powerful, but complicated to set up?
• NeoFinder – media specific
• Find Any File (FAF) – no cached indexes
• KatSearch – APFS / HFS+ only
• EasyFind – relies on Spotlight? Hard to tell.