GoToFile

GoToFile is a cool app that changes how you search for files on your Mac. Ever since Spotlight came out with Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" back in April 2005, finding documents and folders became easier. But let’s be real, there’s always room for improvement! That’s where GoToFile steps in to speed things up.

Speedy Search Features

When you launch GoToFile, it pops up a Spotlight-like search right from its status bar item. You can even set a global keyboard shortcut in the Preferences menu for quick access later on—how awesome is that?

Fuzzy Matching Magic

The search engine uses a technique called fuzzy matching. This means you can still find what you’re looking for even if you misspell part of the file name! Just type what you remember, and GoToFile fills in the blanks automatically.

Search Options Galore

You get to choose whether to search by filenames or full system paths. Switching between these two modes is super easy with just a simple keyboard shortcut: ⌘ + ⇧ + O.

Regular Expressions Made Easy

If you're feeling techy, GoToFile lets you use regular expressions! This helps narrow down searches by prefix or suffix, plus it makes it easy to exclude certain results if needed.

If you want more tips on using regular expressions for file searches, check out the app's details on GoToFile's homepage.

Other Cool Features

A couple more things worth mentioning: GoToFile integrates nicely with Finder so you can access some of its features directly through the contextual menu. Plus, it has this neat “act without doing” feature inspired by Quicksilver, which allows quick actions on selected search results without leaving the app!

Overall, GoToFile is definitely faster than Apple's Spotlight when searching for files, even if it isn't always spot-on accurate. But that’s okay because it gives you plenty of options to choose from based on your query!