Spotlight: the fastest way
Press Command-Space and type part of the name or a word inside the file. Press Return to open the top result, or Command-Return to show it in Finder. Spotlight searches names and the text inside documents it can read.
Finder search, with filters
- Press Command-F in Finder. Choose “This Mac” or the current folder.
- Click the + button to add criteria such as Kind is PDF, Last opened date is within last week, or Name contains “invoice”.
- Save a search you repeat with Save; it appears in the sidebar as a Smart Folder.
When you don’t remember a word
- Recents in the Finder sidebar lists files you opened lately.
- In list view, sort by Date Added or Date Modified to see what arrived or changed around a day you remember.
- Tags you gave a file appear in the sidebar; click one to see everything with it.
When the words are inside a scan or screenshot
A phone scan or a screenshot is a picture of text, so searching its words often finds nothing. See how to search scanned PDFs for ways to give scans a text layer.
Where Lisorto fits
Lisorto for Mac reads files on your Mac, scans and screenshots included, and finds any of them from the menu bar with ⇧⌘Space by a word you remember: a company, an amount, a booking code. It searches what it filed for free and, with Pro, your Documents, Desktop, or iCloud Drive too, and it can answer a question with the file it came from.