Find ANY File on Your Mac | Advanced Finder & Spotlight Tutorial

Learn the most efficient methods for finding files in any situation on macOS by using advanced features for both Finder and Spotlight.

📋 Table of Contents

Intro: 0:00
Finding Large Files: 00:13
Starting with Spotlight: 00:59
Customizing Spotlight: 01:17
Using Filters in Finder: 01:51
Saving Searches: 03:11
Searching Within a Folder: 03:26
Finder Navigation & Customization: 04:04
Finding Application Package Files: 05:09
Displaying Hidden Files: 05:53

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🎥 Behind the Scenes

[RowanTasmanian]

G'day Anson, mate you have done a brilliant job. What I really like is that you speak clearly, at a steady pace and you show things on the screen clearly.
Most people talk too fast. You are an extremely good educator. Please keep up this very high standard you are achieving.
I could never find files on my Mac easily. You have made this tutoring logical and easy to understand.
You have made this Tasmanian very very happy. Thanks Mate.

[elbrujo]

Very helpful to this Mac novice. Thank you!

[davidigo]

Anson thank you. I’ve been trying to find a few gmails that I know I’ve sent/received but to no avail. I’m guessing your instructions in this video will help. I’m age 80 and live London UK. We seniors need sharpshooting clarity. You deliver that.

[madonnacnoble]

So helpful, thanks! Look forward to more Mac tips.

[BillConrad]

Anson, your information has been superb! I now have a clear understanding of how to locate files on my MAC. By the way, would you mind sharing the software you utilized to produce the video?

[AlexandreLollini]

@2:10 to get directly there you can use Finder Command F .

[MrMaximisation]

Thanks. Comprehensive answer. U da man !

[catherinechung]

Love your demo and teaching! Can you teach me how to display the "word" I search on spotlight in "yellow highlight"? The old Macbook Air and old mac os version I bought 10 years ago had that feature, which I find very helpful. But it does not have this yellow highlight of words within the documents in the current OS. Do you have a workaround?

[AbrazoProductions]

Nice job. I would like to have the same in the Mail. I have problems searching in mail. Also make folders to organize the emails is missing.

[ibsi]

Thanks for posting this video. I have an issue with searching specific filetypes, whenever i search all mac, i get all the results, but when i choose to search in a specific folder, no results are displayed. Kindly help

[SajidSanwari]

Can this be installed on the MacBook Pro mid 2010 model? Id tried reading about it, but nothing clear.

[SM-sxlz]

This isn't working on my Mac been having trouble search and finding files. Any suggestions?

[kuenyen]

anyway to preview the matching keyword within the document/text after search by Content via Finder? currently can only see full preview, i would like to only see the string of texts return based on my searches.

[DBLCreations]

I'm using Mac's since a pretty long time now. But with these new macOS's, it seems like i need to learn some of these newer features now. Especially the settings menu. (I've started with OSX Snow Leopard and my latest os is macOS Catalina.) I'm now finally using Sonoma. But man, it's so different for me. The settings are much more confusing to me in a way. Though i'm blaming my chemo brain for that.

Question: I'm looking for a good mechanical keyboard and i always thought that using a dedicated mechanical keyboard like the ones Logitech makes were the best. But if i'm not mistaking, i can see that you are using a Steelseries? (Which are more Windows oriented keyboards) Or so i though? I really like the Corsair keyboards for example but i don't know if i could (or should) use them on my Mac. I'm also living in Europe, so my keyboards are all AZERTY. Which, for regular typing is great. But for coding (which i sometimes do through Adobe DreamWeaver) i know it's better to get a QWERTY keyboard. Even for Photoshop, especially for the short key's.

Not sure but what do you think about this?

Great video, i subscribed!

[chiakiluvsme]

Whay to do if there is not enough space to upgrade to OS? In recovery mode?

[Interestingworld]

Can you do a tutorial on how to delete programs and removing them from the system 100% like on windows using Control Panel.

[Pete_Furlong]

This is great, thank you so much.
But I don't seem to be able to search subfolders. It defaults to a larger folder. It says "Search: This Mac / "(Folder Name)" but only includes the larger folder and is NOT locating the specific files that I know are in there. It does seems to locate these files that I've opened but not the others (mov files). This frustrates me so much because I want to be able to access all of the MOV files from a bunch of subfolders within a subfolder without having to open each individually (There are like 30 of them). Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Sorry to rant and thank you again.

[KoZeroSM]

Can Finder search inside the contents of the comments made in MSWord documents with a track change mode? I can't seem to make it work.

[gregdavidson]

My MAC is using Ventura. When I use the Spotlight feature I cannot see any File Path. i.e. the Spotlight won't tell me WHERE the file is located. Pressing Command does nothing. Any ideas how to get teh Spotlight to tell me where my file is located? TIA

[singgiha]

o M g, all i need just my dir /s command