How To Search My Entire Mac For A File

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I'm new to PyCharm (and Python) but can't find a way to do a complete search for a word in all my files in my PyCharm project. Every time I do Edit-Find it keeps searching either in the current file of searches for the word where my caret is located. Open the Acrobat Reader on your computer. Click on the Edit menu and select Advanced Search. Select All PDF Documents in and then choose your PDF folder. Enter your search term in the input box. When you search for a file on a Mac using Spotlight, Finder, or another window with a search field, the default search range is This Mac. Using the This Mac option means the search is performed on.

  1. Word Search On A Mac
  2. How To Search My Entire Mac For A File Free
  3. How To Search My Entire Mac For A File Download

No matter how much space you have on your Mac, one day, you may see a “Your disk is almost full” notification. Even if it seems like there is no app or program that would take a considerable amount of storage, the large files may be hidden deep down in your Mac’s memory. Keep reading to discover how to locate such files on your Mac and delete them for good.

Scan the most obvious place

Advanced: Find Every Application (.app) Anywhere on the Mac via Command Line. For advanced users and forensic purposes, you can also use the find tool to search for every single.app file (application package) residing anywhere for any user and in any folder on a Mac by turning to the command line. I need a way to search the computer for files like Windows Explorer. I want my program to search lets say hard drive c. I need it to search C: for folders and files (just the ones you could see in c: then if the user clicks on a file on the list like the folder test (C: test) it would search test and let the user see what files/folders are.

When looking for large files on their Macs, users often start scanning a bunch of folders stored on their machines. But, usually, the most common destination of all large files is the Downloads folder. You may automatically download thousands of files and forget to remove them. So, checking the Downloads folder on your Mac may help you find lots of forgotten large files and documents that you don’t need anymore.

Looking for the large items may take some time. Free tools, like CleanMyMac X, can accelerate the process by scanning your Mac’s memory and detecting large files. The only task left for you will be to remove the found files all at once.

Find large files using Finder

Another way to search for large files is by using search filters in Finder. It can help you locate the biggest files on your Mac. Here’s how to find large files using Finder:

  1. Open Finder.
  2. Find the Search field in the top right and click it.
  3. Click the Settings symbol and select Show Search Criteria.
  4. In the list of search filters on the left, choose Other.
  5. In the window that appears, select File Size and click OK.
  6. In the second space, select Is greater than and enter the size in the third space.
  7. Choose KB, MB, or GB in a final filter field.

Remember to select This Mac to get a full list of results. You will then see all files which size is greater than you defined. Look through the found documents and remove unnecessary items that take too much space on your Mac.

Although, this method has certain disadvantages. Finder doesn’t give you a full picture of the large files stored on your Mac. It shows only single files, excluding large folders that comprise a lot of smaller items.

It’s also unclear which files you can safely delete without the risk of removing important documents. Finder neither provides any additional information about files nor shows which folder the file belongs to. So, it’s difficult to decide whether the large file is important or not.

Continue reading to discover how to find the largest files on your Mac using other methods.

Find large files using the Storage Management app

Another solution is to use the built-in Storage Management app.

  1. Choose Apple menu.
  2. Select About This Mac.
  3. In the window that appears, click Storage. Here you can see how much free storage you have and view the amount of space used by different categories.
  4. Click Manage.
  5. As the Storage Management app opens, select Documents.
  6. Browse the Large Files to delete those you don’t need.

Click any file to see its path at the bottom of the window. The Storage Management app also shows the exact size of each document as well as the date you opened it last.

Apple provides helpful recommendations at the top left to help you optimize your storage. Here you can choose to store all your files in iCloud, remove large files like movies and TV shows, turn on Empty Trash Automatically, and reduce clutter.

This method is great for those who don’t have a lot of large files on their Mac. But, if you tend to keep many files on your machine, you may consider using the Storage Management app tiresome.

How to find biggest files on Mac via Terminal

Another way to locate large files on your Mac is to use Terminal. Although some users find commands complicated, if you use them correctly, you can find anything on your Mac. So, you can locate the biggest files on your device, just like that:

  1. Go to Utilities and open Terminal.
  2. Execute find command. If you want to locate all files bigger than 1G under the /home directory, for example, type find /home -size 1G.
  3. To delete the files enter
    find /home -type f -name *.avi -size +2G -exec rm {}
    This command will remove all AVI files that are greater than 2GB under the /home directory.

Using this command, you can also limit your search, setting size filters. Then your command will look like this: find /home -size +30M -size -100M. This command will locate all files that are greater than 30MB but less than 100MB.

Locate and remove large files using CleanMyMac X

If you have enough time, you can look through all data stored on your Mac using the methods described above. In case you want to speed up the process, CleanMyMac X can prove useful. Thanks to its Large & Old files feature, you can look at the bigger picture of all large files found on your Mac and delete them altogether.

Here’s a short instruction on how to find and delete large files using CleanMyMac X:

  1. Download the free version of CleanMyMac X and open the app once it’s installed.
  2. Click the Large & Old Files tab.
  3. Run a quick scan.
  4. CleanMyMac X will show you all files stored on your Mac. You can sort files based on their size, type, and access date, to see the large items that can be removed from your Mac.
  5. Check the boxes for the files you want to delete and click Remove.

Using CleanMyMac X, you can remove all unnecessary files quickly and make some space for more important documents.

Word Search On A Mac

So, these were some simple methods of how to view all files on Mac and delete them. You can either use Finder, the Storage Management app, or Terminal to find the biggest files on your Mac and clean up your machine of them.

If you searching your Mac for a file doesn't return the results you expect, then there are several common culprits. You may simply not notice that the scope of the search is limited to the current folder instead of your entire drive. Or, you may have your Spotlight settings set to not look for some files. If there is a more serious problem, you can try re-indexing your Mac to fix broken search results.

Check out Fixing Broken File Search On Your Mac at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

How To Search My Entire Mac For A File Free


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How To Search My Entire Mac For A File

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