Finding files on your Mac drive can get tricky — especially when you’re not sure exactly what it is you’re looking for. Apple being Apple, file management “just works” most of the time, but that’s not always the case if you need to hunt down something that’s buried deep.

There are a couple of ways to look for files on macOS: a quick and simple way and a more comprehensive and advanced way. If neither of those work, you’ve got third-party tools you can turn to as well. (If you can’t find what you’re looking for after you’ve exhausted all of those options, it might be time to admit that the file isn’t actually there.)

You can use Spotlight to look for files as well as apps, websites, news, word definitions, and more. Just load it on-screen via Cmd + Space or click on the magnifying glass icon on the right side of your menu bar. Then, type the name of the file (or as much of it as you can remember) into the main box. Spotlight searches key user account folders by default, and you can double-check where it’s indexing via the Apple menu > System Settings > Siri & Spotlight.

Spotlight is smart when it comes to searching and includes file names that have your keywords somewhere in them as well as exact matches. It can also look for plain text inside files like PDFs, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets. Scroll down to see results from different categories, including documents and photos, and click one of the Show More links to expand the results for a particular category.  (This is also a great way of jumping to folders, by the way.)

That’s all there is to it. If you’re not finding what you want to find, select the Search in Finder option at the end of the results list — which brings us to our next option.

If you really need to dig deep into your system, Finder is the way to go. Open up the Finder on macOS, and you’ll see a magnifying glass icon — the search option — in the top-right corner. Click this, then start typing out the name of the file you’re looking for, part of the name, something inside the file, or the file type.

As you type, you can toggle between search results matching file names and search results matching file contents underneath the search box. If you’ve inputted a recognized file type, such as JPEG or DOCX, you’ll get the option to search by file type as well.

Meanwhile, to the left, you’ll have the option to run the search across your entire Mac or restrict it to the current folder in Finder (and all of its subfolders). 

If you need to narrow down the search even further, you can use filters.

• Click the small + (plus) button just underneath the search box on the right.
• Pick your filter: Kind, Last opened date, Last modified date, Created date, Name, or Contents. Then, set the criteria — so Image or PDF or Kind, for example.
• You can also choose Other as the filter. This gives you access to a long list of additional filters, from bit rate (for audio files) to resolution width (for images). 
• To add additional filters, click + (plus) again on the right. To remove a filter you’ve added, click – (minus).

As you add and remove filters, the search results in the main window will change to match the new requirements. There’s also a Save option, enabling you to save the search to use again in the future (handy if you’ve set up several specific filters to work together).

Between Spotlight and Finder, macOS has file search pretty well covered, but there are a few third-party tools of note that are worth mentioning. 

Of the ones I’ve tested, I can recommend Find Any File: it’s helpful in terms of the precision it offers when it comes to file locations and file criteria (looking for a file on a NAS that was edited between two specific dates, for example). It’s $6, but you can try it for free first (with on-screen reminders to purchase it).

With HoudahSpot, as with Find Any File, the benefit is in the detail you can go into with your searches. You’re able to search several folders together at once, combine search terms together with Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and put useful limits on your results (so the 100 most recently opened files matching the criteria, for example). You can try it for free, and it’s $34 to buy after the 15-day trial has ended.

Every few weeks, I’ll get a sudden deluge of influencers on my For You Page talking about the same product. Sometimes, it’s Lenovo earbuds or a dupe of a Dyson stick vac. Most of the time, it’s skincare products. I’ve managed to resist most temptations thanks to a strict skincare budget — but for about a year, the algorithm won’t stop hounding me about one product: the Medicube Age-R Booster-H.

The Age-R Booster-H is a $330 skincare wand that claims to boost the efficacy of your skincare by using electroporation — short pulses of electricity to create temporary passageways in your skin that help increase absorption. Basically, you zap your face with this thing, your various skincare potions become more effective, and hopefully, you look like a glowy, poreless goddess afterward. Or, at least, this is what the dozens of influencers on my FYP say right after playing a clip of Hailey Bieber using it in her skincare routine.

I’m not naive. I did my homework. The Medicube site lists white papers on studies it’s done of its products and why electroporation might have merit in skincare. But I also know I’m also being sold a narrative by marketing professionals. If you buy this one gadget that Hailey Bieber and all these beautiful influencers have, you, too, will have glowing, radiant skin! I’m aware this leaves out a lot of factors like money, access to dermatological treatments, filters, and genetics. And yet, common sense is often weak against human vanity and 40 percent off Black Friday sales. So I bought one.

I’ve been using this thing to zap my face every day for three months. Sure, my skin looks a little glowy after using it, but skin always looks glowy after applying skincare. “Have I seen any improvement?” I ask myself that in the mirror every morning while I zap myself.

The lack of dramatic, visible results isn’t why I regret buying this thing, though. What bothers me is now I can’t escape my social media algorithms trying to sell me more of the same.

Once you crack and splurge on a gadget you don’t need, your algorithm is never the same. Since buying the Age-R Booster-H, all I see is more Age-R Booster-H content. For the past three months, I’ve gotten more ads for LED light therapy masks, microcurrent facial toner devices, and even facial massage guns. I’ve furiously swiped past all of them, and yet, this morning, I got an ad for the Age-R Booster Pro — Medicube’s latest wand that combines six skincare gadgets in one for $480.

I’m not going to get it. If I did, I’m sure my FYP would become even more of a skincare QVC than it already is. Look, I know this is TikTok working as intended, but I do resent it. It makes me feel even more beholden to the skincare zappy wand. I spent a lot on the thing, so I will be using this until it dies. Knowing all this, it’s frustrating when I find the same marketing tactics creeping into my brain again. Maybe I haven’t seen better results because I don’t use it with the same Medicube collagen cream as the influencers. I already know that results will vary and that OTC skincare can only do so much. Paid influencers also aren’t incentivized to talk about nuance or caveats. Why else am I not seeing more people say the wand was mid or disappointing? I have to yell at myself not to fall into the trap again.

I fell into skincare TikTok because, during the pandemic, applying skincare was a soothing way to wind down after a stressful day. I enjoyed watching nerdy videos about sunscreen filters and listening to cosmetic chemists talk about the efficacy of certain ingredients. I liked how funny people talked about their day while slathering on retinol. The e-commerce aspect was always there, but once upon a time, it felt like a bit more like a friend telling you the product they stumbled upon. Somewhere, something shifted. Now I feel like I’m five again, sitting on the living room floor and watching a lady with a bouffant sell me a neck cream on the home shopping network.

And while I don’t begrudge the influencers a living, I do wonder how I ended up zapping my face with this $330 skincare wand.

If you made it through that headline and you’re confused, don’t worry — I was, too, at first. Hatsune Miku is an internet fandom thing. She’s not a real person, and she didn’t get her start in some obscure anime — she’s a Vocaloid, which is a synthetic voice that can be fed melodies and song lyrics to output as vocal performances, and she puts on concerts. Here’s a succinct summary from my colleague Jess Weatherbed:

Okay, a quick crash course is that Miku is the mascot and most recognizable character for Vocaloid voice synthesizer software. Each Vocaloid “character” has a specific, unique voice that’s resulted in some of them gaining fan followings like real human performers.

404 Media called Miku a “bonafide virtual pop idol with a large, global following” that often “performs” in the form of a hologram, like that weird 2Pac one from 2012’s Coachella or the avatar-based ABBA shows that have been going gangbusters in London.

Here’s Miku singing a song made for a Sega smartphone game called Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!

Miku is especially popular, as Vocaloids go — to the point that she’s been on David Letterman, regularly tours the world, and has even been married (sort of). Polygon editor-in-chief Chris Plante even created a video explaining her years ago.

But people going to a show called Miku Expo 2024 in Vancouver’s Thunderbird Arena last Thursday didn’t get that — instead, they got Miku on a big ol’ TV, and some of them were pretty grumpy about it on social media, although, as 404 Media points out, that doesn’t really come through in the videos:

But the disappointment of some people is understandable. Tickets to these shows can be pricey. The upcoming Phoenix, Arizona, show, for instance, ranges from $55 for the cheap seats to $150 before fees for the general admission floor. The show appears to be close to selling out, with only a few seats left in the stands and an unknown number of general admission tickets. One fan said they spent nearly $200 for the Vancouver show:

Another fan wrote on X (machine translated from Spanish), “Like when you’ve already paid for your plane tickets, your hotel accommodation, you bought your ticket to the Miku Expo and you spent all your savings, but they end up getting a big TV.”

YouTuber Blake the Nerd said he was upset because the show was promoted as a hologram performance:

404 Media shared other videos of fans posting about how easy it is to make a DIY hologram:

Miku Expo 2024’s organizers apparently made some tweaks for the San Jose, California, show last night, scooting the screen back a bit:

Fans seemed to appreciate the change:

I may not understand Miku’s appeal entirely, but I would rather these folks have a good time at their show. And when you’re going to see a fictional performer, you want the show to help you suspend a little disbelief, right? As a kid, I desperately wanted to go to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Coming Out of Their Shells Tour, which had actual people wearing actual Ninja Turtles suits singing into actual microphones!

Okay, maybe that’s not better than the giant screen at Miku Expo. But if I had paid money to go to one of those Ninja Turtles concerts, I’d have been very disappointed if I’d gotten a pretaped show on a Jumbotron or projected onto a screen.

Then again, a lot of the fun of a show is just getting together with other fans — as Taylor Swift fans showed when they fueled the Eras Tour’s record-breaking theatrical run. Maybe the ticket prices are worth it just to be around people who like what you like.