HoudahSpot – Powerful File Search for Mac.
Locate hard-to-find files and keep frequently used files within reach.
In previous posts, we looked at how using tags can help you organize your files and folders and quickly locate them when they’re needed.
We have already explored the different ways you can use HoudahSpot to tag files. In this post, we will focus on keyboard shortcuts for fast tagging.
Continue reading Apply Color Tags to Files Using Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
HoudahSpot is a file search tool that builds upon macOS Spotlight. You turn to HoudahSpot when you need to:
What if you need a specific set of files? E.g. multiple files of which you have the names in an email, a CSV list, or a spreadsheet. HoudahSpot can help you with that too.
Continue reading Find Multiple Files. Find Files From a List of Names
Note: This blog post strays away from our usual focus on tips & tricks. It does not provide a solution or workaround for Mail searches on macOS Catalina. It rather discusses technical background and ethical considerations.
Recent versions of macOS use two indexing technologies to power local searches in the Spotlight window: Spotlight and Core Spotlight.
Spotlight was introduced with OS X 10.4 Tiger. It indexes user files. Whenever a file is modified, the Spotlight engine calls upon the appropriate importer plug-in to read metadata and text content from the file. That data is then indexed for searching.
The fact that Spotlight works only with files can be a problem for some applications. For “shoebox” applications, it is often more natural to store data items in a single file or database rather than use one file per data item. Such data items cannot be indexed by Spotlight. Thus such applications either have to change their data storage to fit Spotlight’s requirements or resort to tricks to get their data into Spotlight.
Core Spotlight is a more recent addition. Core Spotlight does not watch for data or files to appear. Instead, applications actively submit data to Core Spotlight for indexing. This reversal of roles allows Core Spotlight to index any kind of data. Continue reading Mail Search on MacOS Catalina
After looking at file tags for organizing files as well as some more creative uses, we looked at using HoudahSpot to find tagged files. Now let’s look at tagging files using HoudahSpot.
Again, there are different methods you can choose from. Pick the one that best fits your workflow or personal preference. Continue reading Tagging Files Using HoudahSpot
In previous posts, we saw how to organize files using folders and tags and looked at other uses of tags and labels.
Let’s move on to the most important step: finding your files. HoudahSpot can, of course, search for files by tags or by a combination of tags.
The most obvious way to search for tagged files uses the sidebar of a HoudahSpot search window. Select View > Show Sidebar from the menu to reveal the sidebar.
Click a tag to find files with that tag.
Click the All Tagged Files item in the sidebar to find files that have at least one tag.
Alfred by Running with Crayons Ltd. is an award-winning app for macOS which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more.
HoudahSpot is a powerful file search tool. It takes the guesswork out of Spotlight searches and helps you find files hidden deep in the “haystack” of files accumulated over the years.
HoudahSpot 5 includes an Alfred workflow that provides an elegant way to start a HoudahSpot search using Alfred. You can install this workflow from HoudahSpot > Preferences > Extensions.
Note: Workflows are part of the extended Alfred feature set. This needs to be unlocked by purchasing the Alfred Powerpack .
The workflow is triggered using the hs keyword in Alfred. You may need to use the arrow keys to select the workflow. Press the space key to activate the workflow.
Continue reading How-to: Customize the HoudahSpot Alfred Workflow
You may have seen the following warning: “HoudahSpot” is not optimized for your Mac and needs to be updated. Worry not, HoudahSpot 5.0 is “optimized” for current and future versions of macOS.
Caveat: macOS 10.15 Catalina bans third-party applications from searching the Mail.app Spotlight index. On macOS Catalina, HoudahSpot will thus no longer be able to find your Apple Mail messages. If you rely on HoudahSpot to search your mail messages, we recommend that you voice your concerns through Apple’s Feedback Assistant.
Continue reading Is HoudahSpot Optimized for Upcoming Versions of macOS?
We have seen that file tags can be used to build or complement a filing system.
File tags can also be used to temporarily mark files. Since macOS has the handy ability to assign colors to file tags, such tags can be used to visually identify files. Both Finder and HoudahSpot flag the tagged files with colors of their tags.
This is particularly useful when shifting files around, merging folders, exporting photos to files, etc.
This is a follow-up to an older post. It has been updated for the new DEVONthink 3. Users of the older DEVONthink Pro (Office) can refer to the original post.
DEVONthink is a smart document management solution for Mac. It lets you organize and work with all your documents — bookmarks, email messages, text files, images, PDFs — in one place, regardless of where they come from.
Now that you have all your documents stored and organized in DEVONthink, you can rely on both DEVONthink and HoudahSpot to always find the piece of information you need.
Continue reading Search DEVONthink 3 Databases using HoudahSpot
Recent updates improve the integration between Houdah Software’s HoudahSpot and BinaryNights’ ForkLift.
HoudahSpot is a file search tool that helps Mac users organize files and finds these if they did not.
ForkLift is an advanced dual pane file manager and file transfer client for macOS. With ForkLift you can browse, manage, and organize files. ForkLift can access remote volumes, sync folders, and much more
The Search in HoudahSpot command in ForkLift allows you to start a HoudahSpot search focussed on the folder you are currently browsing in ForkLift. It is found in the Commands menu.
This tool makes use of HoudahSpot’s custom URL scheme. It can be customized from the Commands > Manage Tools… menu item. Refer to the ForkLift User Manual for more details about custom tools. The HoudahSpot User Guide describes the various options of the houdahspot4:// URL scheme.
