fsearch

FSearch finds any file on your Mac by name in well under a millisecond, typos included, and searches inside files from an index instead of rereading the disk. It's a Rust command line tool with a small daemon, a socket API, a Rust crate, and an MCP server so coding agents like Claude Code can call it. MIT licensed, free.

Install the Apple Silicon release or cargo build, then fsearch install. It crawls the disk once, then follows macOS's change feed, so new files show up in milliseconds. Grant it Full Disk Access or it skips protected folders. On the author's benchmarks the index ran 300 to 600 MB and indexing needed close to 1 GB of RAM.

Spotlight and mdfind are free and built in but don't forgive typos or know git status. fd walks the folder on every search. FSearch adds filters like ext:, size: and git:modified. Solo developers in a terminal: free and worth trying. Teams: nothing to buy, everyone runs their own index.

The catch: it's a week old, macOS only, and has no app window. It's not a Raycast or Alfred style launcher. Pin a version.