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Now I want to search a file exists or not on my mac, when I am using Windows, I can using the everything tool that searching any files less than 50ms on the disk, I was wonder if there is any tool like this in macOS to let me searching any files quickly, I am using this find command, it is too slow. I am using the spotlight but I still not sure it shows all the files on disk.

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  • What kind of research have you done on this (including looking for similar questions on Ask Different)?
    – nohillside ♦
    Mar 1 at 13:30

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Spotlight does not index all files, but is real time and fast.

If you want a graphical tool, use Find Any File there are many alternatives, but this one is superb.

Command line tools:

  • mdfind can do amazing complex tasks if the path is indexed
  • locate exceptionally fast, rebuilds the database index in the background periodically, only cares about filesystem names and paths.
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  • Was about to mention locate command! Also with the versatility of shell you can pipe output to grep for more precise filtering of output.
    – Melonee
    Mar 1 at 13:08
  • @melonee Even locate itself understands wildcards :-)
    – nohillside ♦
    Mar 1 at 13:23
  • How do we know if a path is already indexed?
    – Alper
    Mar 1 at 22:55
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    I run a search for a specific term that has few or no hits and make a file and seee if it shows up or search for a file I know exists @Alper . Let me know here if you ask that as a proper question and I’ll take a stab at answering
    – bmike ♦
    Mar 2 at 10:11

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