Find Any File searches your local disks for files by name, creation or modification date, size, or type and creator code (not by content, though).
As there are other tools with a similar search operation, here are the special features unique to Find Any File:
Has a new hierarchical view of the found items, making it much easier to browse 100s of items (see the screenshot).
Can run as root user, finding really any file on your disk, even those that are hidden from normal users.
Can save queries and run them again later.
Unlike Spotlight (i.e., the Finder’s Find command), it does not access a pre-built database but searches the chosen volume directly.
This allows you to find any file, even those inside packages and others excluded from Spotlight search. Hence it is great for finding system files, for example.
On the other hand, it may take a little longer than Spotlight, and it is only fast on HFS(+) volumes. But even on mounted network volumes of a Mac OS X server it can still be surprisingly fast.
Hence, this is not an entire replacement for Spotlight but it can come handy in certain, if not many, situations.
What’s New:
Version 2.0:
New features
In the Preferences there’s a new option Show Results Early. When checked, the results will appear as soon as the first items are found. Closing the window will abort the search. Let me know what you think of this.
New search rule: File Type UTI Conforms To for searching images, music files and alike. See the help text at the window’s bottom when choosing this rule.
Copy JSON Format (cmd-ctrl-C) creates a JSON text in the clipboard, describing most of the selected files’ properties. Possibly useful for post processing in other programs. Let me know if you find this useful. There are also hidden settings to fine tune its output, e.g. for the date format.
Improvements
v2 is a 64 bit application and should therefore run fine on upcoming macOS 10.15.
Searching in “slow” mode (i.e. when searching a subdirectory instead of an entire disk) should be faster in v2 than in v1. Definitely not slower.
The Filter field at the top right of the results window offers the option to search in Any Shown Column. Also, when filtering dates, the month and weekdays can be spelled out (such as “april”).
Deleted items remain in the list, shown with a line (strike) through them. I like your opinion on that. You can disable this option in the Results menu, and also remove all deleted items through it.
The default and recent searches are not stored on disk as .faf files any more but in the app’s preferences.
Changes
v2 runs only on macOS 10.11 and later (v1 supports 10.6 to 10.14).
In the Results window, when “List View” (cmd-1) is chosen, there is no second list at the bottom any more for showing the parent folders of the selected item. Instead, the very bottom of the window shows a so-called Path bar, in which all the folders are listed, and which can be double or ctrl-clicked on.
When choosing a folder in an APFS volume to search, it won’t show “(slow)” because recursive search is hardly slower than searching the entire disk using the “fast search” operation (which is, sadly much slower than searching on HFS formatted volumes).
Compatibility: macOS 10.11 or later 64-bit