Better Search Tool For Mac Mail

Even in 2018, MacBooks still have tiny hard drives that fill up quickly. Luckily there are quick and easy ways to free up space on your hard drive. Here’s how to clean up your Mac and reclaim some drive space.

It’s strange to be looking right at a message about baseball that doesn’t show up when you search for “baseball” within Mail. Kinda makes you want to punch things just a little bit. Spotlight icon - Click it to bring up the Spotlight search field, where you can search for anything on your Mac. Notification Center icon - Click it to view Notification Center, which consolidates your notifications from Messages, Calendar, Mail, Reminders, and third-party apps.

You can obviously free up disk space by simply doing a cursory find-and-delete for big files and other things that you’ve downloaded, but realistically that’s only going to get you so far. Most of the wasted space on your Mac is only going to be reclaimed if you look at lot deeper—cleaning out language files, removing duplicate files, deleting attachments, clearing temporary files, or emptying all of the Trash cans.

If you fail to keep your Mac’s hard drive clean, you’re eventually going to get the dreaded “Your disk is almost full” error, so you may as well start now and clear up some space.

How to Clean Up Your Mac the Easy Way

If you don’t feel like spending a bunch of time to find and clean things up manually, you can use CleanMyMac 3 to get rid of temporary files, clean up extra language files, uninstall applications, get rid of extra files left behind by application uninstallations, find and get rid of big attachments stored in Mail, and a whole lot more.

It basically has all the features of the cleaning applications we talk about in this article, but in a single app—with the exception of finding duplicate files, which you’ll still want to use Gemini 2 for. Luckily it’s the same vendor that makes Gemini 2 and you can get them both as a bundle.

And of course, there’s a free trial that shows where your free space has gone and lets you clean up some of it for free.

Note: before running any cleaning tool, you should make sure that all of your important data is backed up, just in case.

Find and Remove Duplicate Files

One of the trickiest things that can take up lots of drive space are duplicate files littering up your computer—this is especially true if you’ve been using the computer for a long time. Luckily there are great apps like Gemini 2 that can be used to find and remove duplicate files with a really slick and easy interface.

You can buy it on the App Store if you want — Apple had this one as their Editors’ Choice, but you’re probably better off getting it from their website, because they have a free trial available there.

There are a lot of other choices on the App Store and elsewhere, but we’ve used this one and had good results.

Empty Your Trash Cans

The Trash on a Mac is equivalent to the Recycle Bin on Windows. Rather than permanently deleting files from within the Finder, they are sent to your Trash so you can restore them later if you change your mind. To completely remove these files and free up the space they require, you’ll have to empty your Trash. But Macs can actually have multiple trash cans, so you may need to empty several.

To empty your user account’s main trash can, Ctrl-click or right-click the Trash icon at the bottom-right corner of the dock and select Empty Trash. This will delete all the files you sent to the trash from the Finder.

iPhoto, iMovie, and Mail all have their own trash cans. If you’ve deleted media files from within these applications, you’ll need to empty their trash cans, too. For example, if you use iPhoto to manage your pictures and delete them in iPhoto, you’ll have to clear the iPhoto trash to remove them from your hard drive. To do this, just Ctrl+click or right-click the Trash option in that specific application and select Empty Trash.

Uninstall Applications You Don’t Use

The applications you have installed on your Mac are taking up space, of course. You should uninstall them if you don’t need them—just open a Finder window, select Applications in the sidebar, and drag-and-drop the application’s icon to the trash can on your dock. Some of these applications can be taking up a ton of space.

To find out which applications are using up the most space, open a Finder window and select Applications. Click the “Show items in a list” icon on the toolbar and then click the Size heading to sort your installed applications by size.

Clean Up the Huge iTunes Backups of Your iPhone or iPad

If you’ve backed up your iPhone or iPad to your Mac using iTunes, you’ve probably got a bunch of massive backup files that are taking up a shocking amount of space. We were able to clear up over 200 GB of space by finding and deleting some of these backup files.

To delete them manually, you can open up the following path to see the backup folders, which will have random names, and you can delete the folders found inside. You’ll probably want to close iTunes before you do that.

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

The easier (and much safer) way to delete them is to use CleanMyMac, which translates those confusing folders into actual backup names so you can decide which backup you actually want to delete. Just check the things you want to remove, and then click the Clean button.

Clear Out Temporary Files

Your Mac’s hard drive probably has temporary files you don’t need. These files often take up disk space for no good reason. Mac OS X tries to automatically remove temporary files, but a dedicated application will likely find more files to clean up. Cleaning temporary files won’t necessarily speed up your Mac, but it will free up some of that precious disk space.

Your web browser has a built-in option to clear out browsing data that you can use to quickly clear up a bit of space—but it’s not necessarily a great idea. These caches contain files from web pages so your browser can load the web pages faster in the future. Your web browser will automatically start rebuilding the cache as you browse, and it will just slow down web page load times as your browser’s cache grows again. Each browser limits its cache to a maximum amount of disk space, anyway.

There are a lot of other temporary files on your system, which you can see by opening up Finder, using Go -> Go to Folder on the menu, and using ~/Library/Caches to get to the cache folder. This will pull up a folder that has a ton of folders in it, which you can select and delete manually if you choose.

You can clean up temporary files easier, and much safer, by using CleanMyMac. Just open it up and run through a scan, and then go into the System Junk section to identify all of the cache files and other things that you can clean up. Once you’ve selected what you want or don’t want to clean, just click the Clean button.

One of the things that makes a utility like CleanMyMac so great is that it converts a lot of those confusing folder names into the names of the actual applications, so you can see which temporary files you’re actually deleting.

The thing about temporary files, of course, is that most of them are going to come back after you use your Mac for a while. So deleting temporary files is great, but only works for a while.

Check Your Disk to See What is Taking Up Space and Find Large Files

To free up disk space, it’s helpful to know exactly what is using disk space on your Mac. A hard disk analysis tool like Disk Inventory X will scan your Mac’s hard disk and display which folders and files are using up the most space. You can then delete these space hogs to free up space.

If you care about these files, you may want to move them to external media — for example, if you have large video files, you may want to store them on an external hard drive rather than on your Mac.

Bear in mind that you don’t want to delete any important system files. Your personal files are located under /Users/name, and these are the files you’ll want to focus on.

Remove Language Files

Mac applications come with language files for every language they support. You can switch your Mac’s system language and start using the applications in that language immediately. However, you probably just use a single language on your Mac, so those language files are just using hundreds of megabytes of space for no good reason. If you’re trying to squeeze as many files as you can onto that 64 GB MacBook Air, that extra storage space can be useful.

To remove the extra language files, you can use CleanMyMac, as we’ve mentioned earlier (It’s under System Junk -> Language Files). There’s also another tool called Monolingual that can delete these as well, though it’s yet another tool to download for a very specific use. Removing language files is only necessary if you really want the space—those language files aren’t slowing you down, so keeping them is no problem if you have a big hard disk with more than enough free space.

Clean Up Big Attachments in Mac Mail

If you’re using the built-in Mail application in macOS and you’ve had the same email account for a long time, there’s a good chance that large email attachments are taking up a ton of space on your drive—sometimes many gigabytes worth, so this is a good place to check while cleaning up your drive.

RELATED:How to Stop Your Mac’s Mail App From Wasting Gigabytes of Space

You can change the Mail settings to not download attachments automatically to save space, or run a cleanup tool to get rid of them. If you’re using Gmail, you can set limits on how many messages are synced over IMAP by default to only show the last few thousand instead of everything. Go into Mail -> Preferences -> Accounts -> Account Information and change the drop-down for “Download attachments” to either “Recent” or “None”.

Changing this setting will help Mail not use up as much space going forward, but it doesn’t solve the problem of attachments from emails that have already been downloaded.

If you want to remove those attachments, you’re going to need to follow a very annoying manual process:

Open up Mail, and click on the folder that you want to find and remove attachments for.
Use the Sort by Size option to find the biggest messages.
Click on the message, and choose Message -> Remove Attachments from the menu bar. This won’t delete the attachment from the mail server if you’re using IMAP.
Repeat for all the messages that you want to delete attachments for.

Note: if you are using POP for your email, do not delete attachments unless you really don’t want them anymore, because they will be gone forever otherwise. If you’re using IMAP, which any modern email like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail would be using, the messages and attachments will stay on the server.

Cleaning Up Email Attachments the Easy Way

If you want to clean up and delete old attachments automatically, there’s only one good solution that we know of, and that’s CleanMyMac. You can run a scan, head to Mail Attachments, and see all of the attachments that can be deleted. Click Clean, and your hard drive will be free of them. Those attachments will still be on your email server, assuming you’re using IMAP, so you can delete everything without worrying too much.

If you’re worried, you can also uncheck the box next to “All Files” and then manually select all of the files that you want to delete.

Clean Up Your Downloads Folder

This tip is so obvious that you’d think we don’t need to include it, but it’s something that everybody forgets to deal with—your Downloads folder is so often full of huge files that you don’t need, and it’s not something you think about.

Just open up Finder and head into your Downloads folder and start deleting everything you don’t need. You can sort by file size to quickly delete the biggest offenders, but don’t forget to look at the folders—remember that every time you open up an archive file, it automatically unzips into a folder. And those folders sit there looking innocuous but taking up tons of space on your drive.

Use the Storage Tools in macOS High Sierra

Better Search Tool For Mac Mail Merge

The latest version of macOS Sierra has a new tool to help you clean the junk out of your Mac — just go to the menu and choose “About This Mac” and then flip over to the Storage tab.

Once you are there, you can go through the new settings and enable the ones that make sense to you.

Ip Camera Search Tool For Mac

Store in iCloud – this new feature allows you to store your Desktop, Documents, Photos, and videos in iCloud and Apple will automatically free up local space as needed. If you’re on a slow internet connection, you probably don’t want to enable this.
Optimize Storage – the name doesn’t really match the feature, which basically deletes purchased iTunes movies and TV shows after you’ve watched them to keep them from cluttering up your drive. Since movies, especially in HD format, are extremely large files, this can help keep your Mac from running out of space. You can, of course, download them again any time if you’ve purchased them.
Empty Trash Automatically – this is fairly simple, if you turn this on Apple will automatically delete old items out of the trash after they have been in there for 30 days.
Reduce Clutter – this will help you find the biggest files on your hard drive and delete them.

It’s a little clunky and not as easy to use as some of the third-party tools, but it does work.

Be sure to also remove other files you don’t need. For example, you can delete downloaded .dmg files after you’ve installed the applications inside them. Like program installers on Windows, they’re useless after the program is installed. Check your Downloads folder in the Finder and delete any downloaded files you don’t need anymore.

1. UltraSearch

UltraSearch is a creation of JAM Software. They are also the creators of the popular hard drive space recovery program, TreeSize (but you’re better off using these disk space cleaner tools6 Ways to Free Up Space on Your Windows Computer6 Ways to Free Up Space on Your Windows ComputerClutter can be a big downer on productivity. Over time, files get lost, programs go unused, and suddenly, your once spacious hard drive is packed with useless things and you have to clean it up....Read More and the Compact OS feature in Windows 10How to Save More Disk Space with Compact OS on Windows 10How to Save More Disk Space with Compact OS on Windows 10What if you could easily and permanently save up to 6.6 GB of disk space on any Windows 10 device? You can with Compact OS and we show you how.Read More). UltraSearch offers essential search features plus a few extras, all while keeping it simple and fast.

It works by directly searching the Master File Table (MFT). Within the search window, all important file information is displayed. It also displays all of your computer’s partitions and their total size and free space. Additional options include showing folders and/or files in a search, exclude filters, and printing the search results.

2. FileSearchEX

If you prefer the style of search from Windows XP, FileSearchEX is the program for you. Not only is the search interface familiar and comfortable, the app itself is portable and uses minimal system resources.

However, there is one drawback: the free version is a trial — not in the sense that the program will expire and become unusable, but the search window will timeout. Open the window, complete your search, then close it. If you do this in a timely manner, you should be fine.

Overall the search performance is OK. It isn’t nearly as fast as the other programs I tested, but I still noticed it was quicker than the default Windows Search and remains a good alternative.

3. Super Finder XT [No Longer Available]

Super Finder XT has a very nice interface and displays search results quickly. Its interface mimics the interface found in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. And while it’s not overly complicated, it does offer a decent amount of features.

The non-supporter version has quite a few features available, but the supporter version has even more. To use the supporter version, donate any amount to the developer through PayPal. The perks of this version include are receiving a portable app, excluding folders from search results, using special hotkeys, enabling Most Recent Used management, and selecting multiple files.

4. Locate32

As of this writing, Locate32 hasn’t been updated since 2012. Yet despite the app’s age, it still works and it’s still good. It’s free, simple, yet full-featured enough to provide an excellent search experience. If you want to learn more, check out our overview of Locate32Locate32 - Lightning Fast Desktop Search Tool for Your PCLocate32 - Lightning Fast Desktop Search Tool for Your PCRead More. Again, not much has changed since then, so you’ll find everything you need to know in that article.

5. Everything

Everything by Voidtools is the most renowned search alternative to Windows Search. It’s portable so it doesn’t require installation, it’s free, and it’s just an all-around great program.

Upon launching it for the first time, it will scan and build a database of all the files on your computer, but this indexing process is actually quite fast. When typing into the Everything search box, results are shown in real-time with every key you press — only possible because of the smart initial indexing.

There isn’t really an “advanced search” option, but it’s not really needed because the main search is advanced enough as it is. Without a doubt, Everything is one of the best free search tools for Windows 10The 10 Best Free Search Tools for Windows 10The 10 Best Free Search Tools for Windows 10Windows Search is only good for basic and casual use. If you search Windows often, you may be better off with an awesome third-party search tool.Read More.

6. Launchy

Launchy is a nifty app that’s meant to replace the Start Menu, the Taskbar, the File Explorer, and desktop shortcuts. If you’ve ever used a Mac, then it’s a bit like Spotlight. Launchy indexes your entire system, then lets you launch files, apps, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes.

Most people think Launchy can only launch apps, but it can search files and folders if you enable the setting. Open Launchy with the Alt + Space shortcut, click the gear icon at the top right, go to the Catalog tab, find File Types in the right panel, then click “+” to add file types and directories that you want to include in the search.

Best Search Tool For Mac

Which Search Tool Is Right for You?

Which one’s right for you? Only you can decide. They’re all solid options, so my best advice is to try them all out and go with the one that feels best to use on a day-to-day basis. If you find yourself reverting to Windows SearchHow to Search File Contents in WindowsHow to Search File Contents in WindowsEver had trouble finding a file you knew was stored on your computer? Per default, Windows won't search the contents of every single file. This can easily be changed and here is how!Read More, then maybe that particular search tool doesn’t mesh well with your workflow. For it to be a good fit, it should feel natural and convenient to use.

Network Tools For Mac

But bottom line? You can’t go wrong with any of these options. They’re all great and all fast at displaying your search results, although some are faster than others. A few of them have unique features or interface designs that may appeal. It’s up to you!

If speed is your most pressing concern, check out our roundup of the fastest search tools for WindowsWhat Are the Fastest Tools for Windows Desktop Search?What Are the Fastest Tools for Windows Desktop Search?Search is one of the digital tools we take for granted and heavily rely on. Fortunately, Windows comes with a handy search feature. Could third-party tools be better and faster? We made the test.Read More.

Itool For Mac

What current methods are you using to find your programs and files? Do you use an alternative to Windows Search that wasn’t mentioned here? How do you like (or dislike) the native search in Windows 10?

Better Search Tool For Mac Mail

try mysys at integritech.ca, super fast indexing, you can also play movies or music files, playlists etc. Also searches inside pdf's, ebook files, Office files etc you may not need Windows explorer much anymore!
- Nice plug for your paid software.
  Also it requires 10 GB so save it's DB!!!
If you want to search the document content. look at dtSearch, it is a good search software
- Yeah if you have $199.00 to $2,500 hanging around. I could find no free version.
The lightning fast search that supports wildcards in the filename specification and always gives perfect results is the Windows 'DIR' program issued from a Command Prompt window.
Unfortunately, you then have to copy and paste from the Command Prompt window into your file explorer window - which is a real pain. But, when you need to find something, it works.
what about search everything, it will search network drives, which most of these will not. And, after it has indexed files, which can take over an hour on our system, which is LARGE, it is very very fast.
I use Search Everything, I think its best.
Search Everything is best & faster
You might consider revisiting this topic as it is still relevant and your review is four years old now.
what about neoindex ??
Lexprompt WRITE (https://www.lexprompt.com/) displays a list of sentences from inside your files. We use both the Word add-in and a traybar search interface.
We use it at our law firm for quickly accessing legal documents relevant to the current document being written.
I have been using Google Desktop for years. When I got my last laptop, I couldn't download it from anywhere. the Windows 7 search engine is fast enough for me...BUT, I can't find a faster way to get to it without opening Explorer and typing into the search window. Google Desktop allowed me to double-click the key to get a list of files and emails.
Any ideas.
- F3
I really dislike it when people do not scan the files for themselves that they suggest to others.
2 of these 7 applications has Trojans on them. One file link was dead. Please fix your links.
FileSearchEX had a 'Trojan.Win32.Generic.133A0778!322570104[F1]' embedded in it and 'Locate32' had a 'Trojan.PWS.Gamania.44970'.
Please remove these two links from the list as well as the dead link to 'Snowbird'.
For searching, I've been using Agent Ransack since about a year now, to my full satisfaction.
Check out NirSoft ...
Fast once index is loaded, lots of options!
Is there a tool that simply creates a friendly interface for the search options that already exist with Windows 7 search? Of course, I can look up the various search parameters available and how to use them, but rather than using an entirely different search, I'd like to have a user-friendly interface that reminds me that there is type: and tags: and length: and to help me construct ANDs and ORs using the native search. Is there such a tool?
Hey Aaron, I use Lookeen (www.lookeen.com) myself. Have you ever tried it? It is an Outlook tool but can be used as a Windows Search solution as well. Unfortunately it is a bit expensive.
But there is a test demo I think.
But thanks for that great review anyway. I'll definitely try my luck.
- First: this is a really great article, Aaron.
  Second: I think they changed Looken a lot, because I am using it without Outlook. And I even found a free version of it on: http://free.lookeen.com
  Best Regards,
  Regis
- hey is this Damian Degoede?
For me the best search tool is Quick Search by glary utilities. Its a small and very handy application. Love it!
- Thanks for sharing, Arvind! I'll take a look at that.
Thanks for this overview.
I'm looking for something that will allow me to search Win7 file system with the kind of flexibility I am used to from years of using Win2k and WinXP (search by file-type, especially).
There seem to be a few possibilities here - my big question: once files are found, do any of these applications allow you to then operate on the files (move, copy, delete, rename)?
Was using Launchy before. Thanks for suggesting Snowbird!
I love MakeUseOf because of great articles like this.
Tried Super Finder XT, It's good!!!
I use everything everyday, it's only problem that it's case sensitive. I don't know how to remove that :(.
Excellent list and review, thanks Aaron!
i'll just stick with the native search for files
thanks for this review. very informative
Search Everything, by Voidtools
very helpful, i will pick one of this
With various versions of Windows OS searched have gotten difficult. Even in XP, you need to start search, and from the search dialog you are required to launch file search. These options seem to fill the void. I wish the author had his/her own ranking for these options, its not easy trying out all of these 7.
Do we have an alternative which could search inside MS outlook, like emails and attachments within. Windows Desktop search does this but it takes up lot of memory during indexing and slows down your system.
I cannot believe that Agent Ransack is not cited.
Super Finder XT does it for me. I particularly like the user interface.
It's a shame that Google stopped with Google Desktop development...it could search anything :(
Nice article!
My engine of choice is Search Everything (it simply is excellent!)
But I recently found out about a new one called wise jet search from the folks behind Wise Cleaner.
It is free and can be found here: http://www.wisecleaner.com/wisejetsearchfree.html
I just started using it for searches and find it good but Search Everything is still faster.
- I'm not very impressed about wise cleaner
Everything patron here :D
- Evrything no FAT 32 search so my vote goes to Ultra File Search .
  - yeah i guess some people are still with FAT32drives. but why dont you format it to NTFS.. :o
Launchy is great but it hasn't been updated for awhile
My favourite is ava find. It is not in development since 2004 but the 'search scout' and 'favourite picks' feature is very handy.
http://www2.think-less-do-more.com/avafind/
Some good ones there, but the best for me is FileLocator:
http://www.mythicsoft.com/Page.aspx?type=filelocatorpro&page=home
Seriously, No mention of Agent Ransack! [http://www.mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=agentransack&page=home]
Fastest, Most Powerful, Free search tool that I have ever used and have been using for years.
Supports filtering by RegEx, Wildcards, Dates, and Size.
See instant context results for containing text searches. (Supports PDF and Office text searching.)
Detailed print results dialog.
Etc...
I personally feel that it deserves consideration above all others listed here. You do not have to take my word for it; just try it out.
Launchy can search files and folders in addition to executables. You just have to add/change the file type to '*.xls' or '*.*' in the catalog. I think by default Launchy only catalogs .ink files, because most people use it to run programs.
Everything is fast! Definitely my go to choice.