Clicky

HoudahSpot icon

Search for Top Level Files. Exclude Subfolders

HoudahSpot searches always go into subfolders. For example, when you search in your home folder, you can find letters saved to your Documents folder.

When you don’t want files from a subfolder to clutter search results, excluding the subfolder is easy: just drag the folder from the breadcrumb path at the bottom of the HoudahSpot window to the Locations/Exclude list.

You can repeat the procedure to exclude more folders. But if you want to see only results from the top level folder, it is easier to use the path filter to simply hide results from nested folders.

  1. Let’s say you are searching for files in /Users/pierre/Documents, but want to see only files located at the top level of the Documents folder
  2. Type the the following in the filter field above the search results: /Users/pierre/Documents/*/
  3. Click the loupe in the filter field to reveal filter options. Select Exclude by Path
  4. HoudahSpot will hide all files where the path has an additional slash after /Users/pierre/Documents/. That is all files located in a subfolder. Only top level files remain listed.

The “*” serves as wildcard. It matches any number of characters. In this case: a sequence of characters followed by a slash. I.e. an extra folder name in the path.

Exclude files by pathYou can simplify the procedure by dragging the Documents folder from the breadcrumb path at the bottom of the window to the active filter field. You then just need to type the extra “*/”.