KatSearch: Fast, simple, powerful filesystem search for macOS

KatSearch is a work in progress and currently only available as an alpha release. Some things will be broken. Caveat emptor!

Mac power-user app to quickly find files on entire APFS and HFS+ volumes by scanning the file system catalog.

KatSearch is written by: Sveinbjörn Þórðarson

Features

Unlike Spotlight, KatSearch performs no indexing and only looks at filenames, not content. It uses a fast low-level kernel call to search the entire file system via the APFS or HFS+ file system catalog.

• Fast, native, modern macOS app with a responsive, powerful, no-nonsense interface
• Displays live search results
• Scans the actual file system, not just the userland files Apple wants you to see
• Can run with admin privileges to find all files irrespective of permissions
• Ubiquitous native drag and drop behaviour, with hooks into Finder actions/services via contextual menu
• Supports all the standard Finder keyboard shortcuts for file actions
• Search windows can be invoked using a global hotkey
• Includes searchfs, a command line tool counterpart
• Free, open source software written in Objective-C/Cocoa