Oil Find is a file search tool for macOS that works like Everything on Windows: it keeps its own in-memory index of every file name on your disk instead of relying on Spotlight. Press ⇧⌘F, a search field appears in the middle of the screen, and results update with every keystroke. When files are created, renamed or deleted, the index follows along in real time.
Everything about searching by file name, external drives included, is in the free, open-source version. Searching the contents of images and documents, and drives you've unplugged, is part of the paid Pro add-on.
Why it's fast
- File names live in one contiguous block of memory. Hundreds of thousands of names are stored column by column and scanned front to back, with no per-file objects.
- Matching runs in C with NEON. Character comparisons use Apple silicon's vector instructions in batches.
- Each keystroke narrows the last result. Typing one more character only searches what already matched.
- Only changes get updated. FSEvents reports what changed and the index is updated incrementally. After a restart, Oil Find catches up from where it left off.
Measured on an Apple M5 with 24 GB of memory, using the command-line tool in this repository. Each query ran 20 times; the table shows the median.
| Index scope | Files | Indexing | Resident memory | readme |
wd (pinyin) |
kind:image |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Default | 850K | 3.0 s | 45 MB | 0.6 ms | 0.3 ms | 3.9 ms |
| Whole disk | 7.5M | 27.2 s | 343 MB | 8.1 ms | 3.4 ms | 3.8 ms |
The default scope leaves out dependency folders, app and package internals, Library and system folders. You can turn each of them on in Settings. A single letter matches the most files and is the slowest case: about 11 ms in the default scope and about 58 ms for the whole disk.
Search syntax
| Type | Meaning |
|---|---|
wd, wendang |
Pinyin initials or full pinyin, finds 文档 |
foo bar |
Contains both foo and bar |
foo | bar |
Contains foo or bar |
readme !node_modules |
Contains readme, not inside node_modules |
*.png |
Wildcards match the whole name |
~/Desktop/ png |
Only under the Desktop |
ext:pdf;docx |
By extension |
kind:image |
By kind: folder, app, doc, image, video, audio, code, archive |
file:, folder: |
Files only, or folders only |
size:>10mb, size:1mb..5mb |
By size |
dm:today, dm:week, dm:2026-10-01 |
By modification date |
regex:^IMG_\d+ |
Regular expressions |
You can paste paths straight from a terminal or editor: file:// URLs, quoted or escaped paths and paths ending in :line:column all work. Press ⌘/ in the search field for a syntax reference.
Keyboard
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ⇧⌘F | Open search (configurable in Settings) |
| Return | Open |
| ⌘Return | Show in Finder |
| Space / ⌘Y | Quick Look (Space after selecting a result) |
| ⌘C / ⌥⌘C | Copy path, copy name |
| ⌘⌫ | Move to Trash |
| Tab / ⌘1…9 | Switch kind |
| ⌘/ | Syntax reference |
You can also drag results into other apps.
Oil Find Pro
The free version is open source and free forever. Pro is a closed-source paid add-on on top of it: pay once, with a 7-day free trial.
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Search by file name: pinyin, wildcards, regex, filters by kind, size and date | ✓ | ✓ |
| Live updates, Quick Look, drag and drop, full keyboard control | ✓ | ✓ |
| Excluded folders and file types, in-app updates | ✓ | ✓ |
| External drives: indexed when plugged in, kept up to date | ✓ | ✓ |
| External drives stay searchable when unplugged | ✓ | |
| Image content: text and objects in screenshots and photos | ✓ | |
| Document content: PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Pages, Markdown and more | ✓ | |
| Source code | Open source, MIT | Closed source |
| Price | Free | $9.99 once (¥49 in mainland China) |
Pro and the free version are the same download:
- After downloading from Releases or the website, every free feature works right away and never expires, with no activation.
- To use Pro, open the Oil Find Pro section in Settings and click Start 7-Day Free Trial, or enter a license key. When a trial ends, only Pro features turn off.
- Building from source gives you the free version, without Pro.
- Images and documents are processed on your Mac and never uploaded.
Buy it or read more at find.oiloil.org/en/pro.
Install
- Download
Oil-Find.zipfrom Releases, unzip it and drag Oil Find into Applications. - The first time you open it, macOS blocks it because it isn't notarized by Apple. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway near the bottom.
- Press ⇧⌘F and start typing.
- Optional: grant Full Disk Access to also search mail attachments and other apps' data. Oil Find works fine without it.
When a new version is out, Oil Find tells you; click Update and Restart. You can turn off automatic checks in Settings.
The download includes Pro, but you can keep using Oil Find for free without activating it. See Oil Find Pro above for the difference.
To uninstall, quit Oil Find and delete Oil Find from Applications and ~/Library/Application Support/Oil Find.
Build from source
Requires macOS 14 and Swift 5.10 or later (Xcode 15.3 or newer).
git clone https://github.com/oil-oil/oil-find.git cd oil-find swift test scripts/build-app.sh # builds build/Oil Find.app scripts/install.sh # builds and installs into Applications
Building from source gives you the free version, without Pro. Your own builds are ad-hoc signed, so you need to grant Full Disk Access again after each rebuild.
Privacy
- Oil Find reads file names, sizes and modification dates only, never file contents. With Pro image or document content search on, it reads those files on your Mac to extract their text, and the results stay on your Mac too.
- The index stays on your Mac in
~/Library/Application Support/Oil Find/. - A daily update check fetches one version file and sends no device or usage data. You can turn it off in Settings.
- With Pro, the license is verified online once a day. Only the license key, a device identifier and the device name are sent.
Current limits
- Apple silicon and macOS 14 or later only.
- Network volumes aren't supported.
- After you unplug an external drive, the free version can't search its files; Pro can.
- The free version searches file names only; Pro also searches the text inside images and documents.
Project layout
| Folder | Contents |
|---|---|
Sources/COilFind |
C: batched directory reads, name comparison, search scoring |
Sources/OilFindCore |
Scanning, indexing, queries, live updates, persistence, app updates |
Sources/OilFindApp |
The AppKit app and Settings |
Sources/OilFind |
The app's entry point |
Sources/oilfind-cli |
Command-line tool for benchmarks and troubleshooting |
site |
The website, find.oiloil.org |
See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the index design and AGENTS.md for development conventions.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are welcome. The project does one thing, file search, so improvements to matching, ranking, indexing, performance and the interface are all in scope. Pro features (image and document content, searching unplugged drives) are maintained in a private repository, and pull requests that implement them won't be merged.
License
The code in this repository is licensed under MIT. The Pro module isn't in this repository and isn't open source; the builds on Releases and the website include it.