How do I show All Files under the current folder?

Question

When I go to search and don't enter any limiting criteria, nothing shows up. How do I show all files including in sub-folders under the current directory in the Finder? The end goal is to sort all my files by date and be able to manipulate them in the Finder.

I tried entering "*" in the search box. The first time I did this it somehow got turned into search for a name containing "*" which showed nothing. A second time I managed to just get "*" by itself, but only about 20,000 of 500,000 files were displayed.

(note: i rounded, the actual number of files shown/total are close to the above numbers but are not these exact round numbers)

Answer 1

MacOS used to come with a feature called "All My Files", which did indeed show you ... all your files. But it was removed in High Sierra -- quite probably because showing you 500,000 files (as the result of a live search query) in one window would cause significant slow down.

All My Files was replace with "Recent", which shows you all the files created or modified within 1 day. You can modify this search, or create your own Smart Folder.

1. Create a New Smart Folder in Finder's File menu.
2. Add criteria for "Created Date" and "Content Modified", both to be within some all-inclusive value, like "within the last 35 years".

You can then display the results in a list and sort by date.