Coming from Windows
One of Everything's least-known features was also one of its best: your file index, reachable from any browser on the network.
Everything had a built-in HTTP server. Turn it on, and any device on your network could open a browser, hit your machine's address, and search its file index — phone, tablet, another laptop. There was also ETP/FTP for the same idea, and a plugin protocol so one Everything instance could search another machine's index.
For a desktop that stays on, it turned "which machine is that file on?" into a question you could answer from the sofa.
Nothing about macOS prevents it. The obstacles are ordinary ones:
The app has to be running. A menu bar app that a user can quit is a server that disappears. Everything ran as a service on Windows, which is a normal thing for Windows software and an unusual thing for a Mac app.
Full Disk Access plus a network listener is a combination worth being careful about. An app permitted to read your entire filesystem, listening on a port, is one authentication bug away from being a very effective way to exfiltrate someone's home directory. Everything's HTTP server had no authentication at all by default.
macOS firewall prompts. The first time the app listens, macOS asks whether to allow incoming connections, which is a confusing dialog for a search app to trigger.
Screen Sharing — built in, encrypted, and already how most people reach another Mac. Not search, but it gets you to the machine.
SSH plus a command-line search — if the other Mac has remote login on, this is the closest real equivalent:
ssh othermac 'ew search "quarterly report"'File Sharing and a local search — mount the volume and search it locally. Slow, because it searches over the network rather than asking a remote index, which is the precise thing Everything's ETP avoided.
Everywhere does not ship an HTTP server. We have deliberately not built one yet, because doing it properly means authentication, TLS and a threat model, and doing it improperly means shipping a filesystem-reading app that listens on a port. The SSH route above works today and inherits macOS's own security rather than inventing a new one.
If this is a feature you actually used, it is worth saying so — it is on the list, and demand is what moves things up it.
Not directly. SSH from a terminal app to a Mac with remote login enabled is the practical route, or Screen Sharing to drive the Mac itself.
It had optional basic authentication and no TLS. It was designed for a trusted home network, and running it on an untrusted one was a genuinely bad idea.
No. It indexes local and connected volumes and keeps records for drives that are currently unplugged, but it does not serve its index over the network.
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.
Download for Mac