Zapfind
Find any file on your Mac instantly
Fuzzy, regex and live — all on-device
$ brew install --cask moyulabs/tap/zapfindplannedRequires macOS 13 Ventura or later · Apple silicon & Intel
Press ⌥ Space to summon Zapfind
Everything-style search, for Mac
Zapfind keeps its own compact index of your filesystem, so results show up as you type: typically 5–60 ms across about a million files. No waiting for Spotlight to wake up.
Light on your Mac
The whole index cache is about 6 MB, memory use stays low, and FSEvents keeps it current the moment files change. Nothing ever leaves your machine.
Zapfind numbers measured on an M-series Mac with ~1M files.
Fuzzy by default
Type q3rep and get Q3-report-final.pdf. Letters can be scattered, misordered words still land, and the best match floats to the top.
Regex, automatically
Start typing something that looks like a pattern, such as ^IMG_\d{4}\.heic$, and Zapfind quietly switches to regex mode. No toggles to remember.
Always up to date
Zapfind listens to macOS FSEvents, so a file you saved a second ago is already searchable. No re-index button, no nightly crawl.
Private by design
Indexing and search happen entirely on your Mac. No account, no telemetry, no cloud. The index stays in your Library folder.
Zapfind Pro
For people who live in it all day.
Content search
Search inside text, Markdown and code files.
External drives
Index USB and network volumes too.
Saved filters
One keystroke for “PDFs this week”.
Custom actions
Run your own scripts on any result.
How it compares
| Feature | Zapfind | Spotlight | Finder search | Alfred (files) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search latency | 5–60 ms | ≈ 100–500 ms* | ≈ 1–5 s* | ≈ 50–300 ms* |
| Fuzzy matching | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ◐ |
| Automatic regex | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Hidden & system files | ✓ | ✕ | ◐ | ✕ |
| Live updates | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Index size | ~6 MB | ≈ GBs* | — (uses Spotlight) | — (uses Spotlight) |
| Fully offline | ✓ | ◐ | ✓ | ✓ |
✓ yes · ◐ partly · ✕ no. * Approximate: values marked ≈ are rough estimates from typical use, not benchmarks. Zapfind figures are measured.
Pricing
Pro
- Everything in Free
- Content search
- External & network drives
- Saved filters & custom actions
Payments will be handled by Paddle as merchant of record. Prices may include VAT.
FAQ
How is it so fast?
Zapfind builds its own compact index of file paths instead of querying Spotlight, and keeps it in memory-friendly form. Searches are a scan over a few megabytes, not a database query.
Does it need Full Disk Access?
Only if you want it to see protected folders like Mail or Messages data. Without it, Zapfind indexes everything macOS lets it read.
Does it replace Spotlight?
For finding files, yes. Keep Spotlight for apps, maths and dictionary lookups if you like; they get along fine.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No. There is no server to upload to. See our privacy policy.
Changelog
- 0.9 beta
Live FSEvents updates, auto-regex detection, index cache down to ~6 MB.
- 0.5 alpha
First internal build: fuzzy search across ~1M files.
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