Though neat, HoudahSpot isn’t quite necessary for the average Mac user but if you often find yourself digging through piles and piles of files, I’d give it a try.įor more information, visit. I would recommend this application to any person with a mind-numbing number of various files. and had started using DevonThink again as an alternative to the Finder. Many of these features may seem pretty standard or straightforward when it comes to searching for files, but it’s their use in conjunction with each other and the convenience of all these tools being in a single program that make HoudahSpot truly powerful. Im applying tags to files within DevonThink but HoudahSpot is showing me that. Other wonderful tools at HoudahSpot’s disposal are Snippets (you can save sets of frequently used search criteria), find by example (you can drag a file onto a search criterion to set that criterion to find similar files), info pane preview of your files, hot keys, and an Apple Script/custom URL scheme so you can start HoudahSpot searches from third party tools.
I do not know how to outline HoudahSpot’s entire plethora of tools without simply listing things, as there are too many intuitive options to cover to make it sound pretty, but two features I found particularly useful include having multiple search tabs open and the ability to save searches as templates. You can also exclude certain keywords or other specifications so that your search for a specific untitled document that has notes from a meeting in it doesn’t show you a different untitled document that was your Christmas list for 2010. If your file is easy to find, it’ll pop right up, but if your initial search isn’t sufficient to narrow down your results, you can easily add search parameters like file type, context, content, file size, pixel count, date last accessed, and almost anything else you can think of.
You start with a simple search bar search. I have too many drafts of everything I write, and HoudahSpot has been pretty effective at finding the specific document I was searching for amidst the crowd of documents with random keywords as titles instead of any helpful labeling system (maybe someday). It gives you a lot more search parameters than Finder or Spotlight, so you can conveniently find exactly what you want. HoudahSpot is a powerful search tool for your Mac. When you aren’t searching, your files can be browsed as usual. The search terms can be targeted at file names, metadata, or even file contents. It allows you to start with a broad query and narrow it down with a collection of various criteria. HoudahSpot Mac App nice tool for searching. HoudahSpot presents the most detailed, precise search we’ve ever seen in a Mac Finder alternative.