Instant
as you type
Results update with every keystroke from Everyfile's own index — p95 0.3 ms across 800K+ files. No spinner, no wait.
Find any file by name, instantly. A live local index that keeps itself fresh, a global hotkey panel, QuickLook with Space and power search operators — like Everything, but native to your Mac.
On first launch Everyfile scans your drive and builds its own index of every file name — hundreds of thousands of files in seconds.
A Spotlight-style panel drops down over whatever you're doing. No app to switch to, no window to find.
Results appear instantly as you type. Hit return to open, or reveal in Finder. Done.
Results update with every keystroke from Everyfile's own index — p95 0.3 ms across 800K+ files. No spinner, no wait.
Press ⌘⇧Space from any app and a Spotlight-style panel drops down. Search, open, dismiss — without leaving what you were doing.
The index keeps itself fresh as your files change — a built-in watcher picks up new, moved and renamed files in real time. You never re-index by hand.
Select a result and tap Space to preview it right there — PDFs, images, video, code — exactly like Finder. Glance, then open only if it's the one.
Narrow any search with kind: (image · pdf · video · doc · code), date: (today · week · month), size:>10mb and path: — combine them with the name to land on the exact file.
Grab any result straight from the panel and drop it into another app — attach it to an email, drop it in a chat, move it in Finder. No round-trip to find the file first.
Open the panel and — before you type a single letter — you see the files you touched most recently. Often the one you want is already right there.
Your iCloud Drive files live where most tools never look. Everyfile indexes them too — so the file you saved on another Mac shows up here.
The index never leaves your Mac and is stored private to your account. No account, no telemetry — one-time purchase, free updates within the major version.
| Everyfile | HoudahSpot | Find Any File | Spotlight | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Own index, not Spotlight's | ✓ | builds on Spotlight | live scan, no index | its own index |
| Global hotkey panel | ⌘⇧Space | app window | ✗ | generic ⌘Space |
| Instant results while typing | 0.3 ms | ~ | slow (walks FS) | ✓ |
| Finds what Spotlight misses | ✓ | ~ (inherits Spotlight) | ✓ | misses files |
| Indexes iCloud Drive | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
| Live auto-index (stays fresh) | ✓ | ~ (Spotlight) | ✗ (re-scans) | ✓ |
| QuickLook with Space | ✓ | ~ | ✗ | ~ |
| Power operators (kind/date/size/path) | ✓ | ✓ | basic | ~ |
| One-time purchase | $19.99 | $34 | $8 | free |
| On-device, zero telemetry | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Everyfile's whole interface is localized into 8 languages — it follows your Mac and speaks your language out of the box. No setup, nothing to switch on.
By name. Everyfile is built to find any file by its name, instantly — the thing Spotlight is surprisingly bad at. It indexes file names (and paths), not the text inside documents. Content search is on the roadmap for a later version.
Yes. iCloud Drive files live under a folder most search tools quietly skip, so files you saved on another Mac often go missing. Everyfile indexes them too, so they show up alongside everything else.
Instant. On a real home folder of 809,043 files, the full index builds in about 23 seconds and queries return in a p95 of 0.3 ms — results appear faster than you can finish typing. The speed is the whole point.
Yes. After the first build, a lightweight watcher keeps the index fresh in real time — new, moved, renamed and deleted files are picked up automatically. You never have to re-index by hand, and a file you just saved shows up in your next search.
Type them right alongside the file name. Use kind: to filter by type (image, pdf, video, doc, code), date: for recency (today, week, month), size:>10mb for size, and path: to restrict to a folder. Combine them freely — for example budget kind:pdf date:month finds PDFs named "budget" touched in the last month.
Yes. Select any result and press Space for a QuickLook preview — PDFs, images, video, code and more — exactly like Finder. Glance to confirm it's the right file, then hit return to open it. You can also drag a result straight out of the panel into another app, like attaching it to an email.
No. The index is built once and then kept fresh by a lightweight watcher that only reacts to the files that actually change. When you're not searching, Everyfile sits idle at effectively 0% CPU.
No. One-time purchase, yours forever. You get free updates within the same major version (all of 1.x). Major upgrades may be paid, and only if you choose to take them.
Up to 2 Macs you own, with a single license. Enter the key on each and you're set.
Everything runs on your Mac. The index — which includes your file names and paths — is stored private to your account (permissions 0600) and never leaves the device. No account, no sign-up, zero telemetry.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
Absolutely — a 14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. Payments are handled by Paddle; just reply to your receipt and we'll sort it out.
Found a bug, or wish it did one more thing? Tell us — every message goes straight to the people who build Everyfile. No account, no tracking.