Comparisons
One of these answers in milliseconds. The other reads your disk every time you press return. Both are correct designs, for different people.
EasyFind scans. It walks the filesystem when you run a search. Nothing is stored between searches, no index exists, no background process runs.
Cling indexes. It walks the filesystem once, keeps a binary index, and updates it live through FSEvents. Searches read the index.
Everything else follows from that.
Nothing is ever stale. EasyFind sees the disk as it is at the moment you ask. An index can lag; a scan cannot.
No permissions theatre, no background process, no index on disk. EasyFind is free, small, and has been maintained for many years.
It reads contents. Slowly, because it opens files as it goes — but it does.
Speed. Cling advertises under 100 ms across nine million files. EasyFind on a large external drive is measured in minutes. This is not a small difference; it changes whether you search casually or only when you have decided it is worth the wait.
Results as you type. A scan cannot do this. An index can.
EasyFind if you search rarely, want to spend nothing, want no background process, or need to search contents across arbitrary formats and do not mind waiting.
Cling if you search often and want the answer while you are still typing, and you are on macOS 14 or later.
If you want indexed speed *and* content search, neither is the answer — that combination is what Everywhere exists for, at $19 against EasyFind's nothing and Cling's €12.
No, and not close. EasyFind scans the disk on every search; Cling reads a prebuilt index. On a large volume that is minutes against milliseconds.
Yes, and it remains free. Its design is unchanged: scan on demand, keep no index.
Yes, by opening files as it scans, which is why content searches are slow. Cling does not search contents at all.
Everywhere keeps track of every file on your Mac — including the folders Spotlight hides and drives you have unplugged. Free for a day, then $19 once.
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