#Houdahspot alternative full
#Houdahspot alternative series

#Houdahspot alternative series

For example, a Text Content parameter can be limited to ‘contains prefixes,’ ‘contains words,’ ‘contains phrase,’ and ‘contains all.’ Search parameters can also be grouped, allowing you to pick a series of parameters and require that ‘All,’ ‘Any,’ or ‘None’ of them be true.Īs you build a search, rows can be disabled temporarily to test alternative setups without deleting them, which is a great way to experiment with how a new row affects search results. Refining a search with HoudahSpot’s hundreds of search parameters.įor each search parameter you pick, the search can be further refined with qualifiers that depend on the kind of parameter you are searching.

#Houdahspot alternative full

The rest are available by choosing ‘Other’ and browsing the full list of filter parameters. Name, Kind, Tags, Last Opened, Created, Modified, File Extension, Text Content, and others are all available from a drop-down menu in the Refine pane. In total, there are around 200 different parameters you can use to refine a search from common ones like ‘File Extension’ to obscure ones like ‘dSYM UUIDs.’ HoudahSpot doesn’t overwhelm users with every choice though. There are more options for refining a search than make sense to list in this review. The next panel of HoudahSpot’s window is where searches are refined. The far left panel is where templates, snippets, and favorite tags live, which I’ll cover later in this review. The app is most useful when your first rudimentary search turns up hundreds or thousands of files in HoudahSpot’s results pane, which is when its search parameters come into play.īelow HoudahSpot’s toolbar, up to four panels can be displayed. If you find what you were looking for immediately, you probably didn’t need HoudahSpot to find it.

Additional searches can be started in a separate window or new tab. HoudahSpot’s search field also supports several advanced search operators like predefined relative dates such as ‘next week’ and ‘yesterday’ as well as wildcard characters, boolean operators, numeric values, comparisons, ranges, and more.

That kicks off a search that remains active until you click the stop button.

Type the text you are looking for into HoudahSpot’s search field and hit the Return key or click the play button next to the search field. In that case, you do just as you would in your browser. Usually, that begins with a recollection of something about a file whether that’s a bit of text from the file name, the contents of the file, or something else. The process of finding a file with HoudahSpot mirrors how searches start for most people.