Coming from Windows
Muscle memory is the hardest thing to move between platforms. Here is what each operator you know becomes.
Everything's syntax is terse and worth keeping. Most of it maps cleanly.
| Everything | Meaning | On a Mac |
|---|---|---|
ext:pdf | extension is pdf | ext:pdf |
ext:png;jpg | either extension | ext:png,jpg |
size:>100mb | larger than | size:>100mb |
dm:today | modified today | dm:today |
path:downloads | path contains | path:downloads |
folder: | directories only | folder: |
file: | files only | file: |
!term | exclude | !term |
a | b | either | a | b |
"exact phrase" | literal | "exact phrase" |
regex:^IMG_ | pattern | /^IMG_/ |
The separator for a list of extensions is the one thing that differs: Everything uses a semicolon, and a comma reads more naturally to most people.
dupe: — Everything can list duplicate filenames inline. On the Mac this is usually a separate action rather than an operator; in Everywhere it is ⌘D on a selected result, which finds other copies by name and size.
attrib: — Windows file attributes (hidden, system, archive) have no clean macOS counterpart. The nearest thing is the dotfile convention and the hidden flag, which behave differently enough that a direct mapping would mislead.
content: — Everything added content search in 1.5, and it is slow there for the same reason it is slow everywhere: reading file bodies is not a filename lookup. On the Mac, Spotlight already does content search well, and mdfind exposes it from the Terminal.
Almost none of it works. Finder's search has a menu-driven equivalent for kind and date, and kind:pdf is understood in the Spotlight bar, but there is no path operator, no extension operator that behaves predictably, and no exclusion.
This is the gap that makes switchers unhappy. The syntax is not merely different; for filename work it is mostly absent.
find and mdfind cover a lot, verbosely:
find ~ -iname "*.pdf" -size +100M
mdfind -name report -onlyin ~/DocumentsBoth are genuinely useful and both are built in. Neither is something you reach for mid-thought, which is exactly what Everything's one-line syntax was for.
Not in our tool — extension lists use a comma instead. Everything else in the common set carries over directly.
None accept all of it. The operators people actually use daily — ext, size, dm, path, exclusion, OR and quoted phrases — are widely supported.
Use Spotlight or mdfind for that. Content search is a different problem from filename search and macOS already handles it well.
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