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Advanced File Search in FileBrowser Pro for Mac

Advanced File Search with Filters, Regex & Saved Searches on Mac

Use FileBrowser Pro on your Mac to perform advanced file searches across local, cloud, and network locations. Filter results by type, date, or size, use regex for precise searches, and save your searches for quick reuse.

Simple Search

  1. Open FileBrowser Pro for Mac and browse to a folder you want to search and click the search icon in the toolbar.
  2. Type in the box at the top of the screen.
  3. Press enter on the keyboard and you will be asked if you want to search this folder only or all of its sub folders.
FileBrowser Pro for Mac showing advanced search results by filename and contents in Google Drive

GoogleDrive Searching

Searching on Google Drive not only searches file names but also file contents, making finding your documents a breeze.

Live Searching

To enable live searching while typing: click the Search icon then expand the options by clicking the advanced search icon, click the "Preferences" button and enable "Search While Typing".

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Advanced Search

Not Containing

You can exclude files with matching text from your search results.

  1. In FileBrowser Pro for Mac click the advanced search icon in the search bar.
  2. Enter the text you want to exclude in the "Not Containing" input field.

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FileBrowser Pro advanced search on Mac showing exclusion of files containing specific text

Search Types

You can filter your search results by type groups.

  1. In FileBrowser Pro for Mac click the advanced search icon in the search bar.
  2. Select the "File Type" drop down and select a preset or "Custom".
    • Images
    • Videos
    • Music
    • Documents
    • PDF
    • Archives
    • Other
    • Folders
    • Custom
  3. Custom: You can enter any file types you want to match in the file type input such as "nef" or multiple file types "nef,psd,pdf.txt".

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FileBrowser Pro for Mac advanced search filtering results by document and other file types

Search Dates

You can filter your search results by preset dates or a custom date range.

  1. In FileBrowser Pro for Mac click the advanced search icon in the search bar.
  2. Select the "Date" drop down and select a preset or "Custom".
    • Custom
    • Before - Enter date
    • After - Enter date
    • Last 24h
    • Last week
    • Last month
    • Last Year
  3. Custom: You can enter a date range from and to.

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FileBrowser Pro advanced search on Mac filtering results by custom date range

Search Sizes

You can filter your search results by preset file sizes.

  1. In FileBrowser Pro for Mac click the advanced search icon in the search bar.
  2. Select the "Size" drop down and select a preset.
    • Smaller than 1kb
    • Smaller than 1mb
    • Larger than 1mb
    • Larger than 10mb
    • Larger than 100mb

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FileBrowser Pro for Mac advanced search filtering results by preset file size ranges

Search XMP Ratings

You can filter your search results by preset XMP ratings.

  1. In FileBrowser Pro for Mac click the advanced search icon in the search bar.
  2. Select the "Rating" drop down and select a preset.
    • All
    • Rejected
    • Not Rejected
    • 0-5 Stars
    • One or more stars

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FileBrowser Pro advanced search UI on Mac filtering results by XMP star ratings

Save Searches

After you have created a search that you would use regularly you can Save your search.

  1. In FileBrowser Pro for Mac cick the advanced search icon in the search bar.
  2. Edit your search paramters
  3. Then click the "Save Search" button
  4. Give your new search a name and click "Save"

Load Searches

To load a previously saved search, perform the following actions:

  1. In FileBrowser Pro for Mac click the advanced search icon in the search bar.
  2. Click the "Load Search" button
  3. Select your search from the list, once selected you can see the search details. Click "Load"
  4. Once your search is loaded you will need to run it by clicking "Search Folders"

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FileBrowser Pro for Mac showing saved advanced search options for reuse

Regex Search

Use regular expressions (regex) to search for specific patterns rather than a set of words. You can match files that begin or end with your search parameter. A search like this "[0-9]{4}" will return files that have a 4 numbers together in the filename.

Regex examples:

  • [bc]at Match the characters 'b or c' and charcters 'at' for example 'bat' or 'cat'
  • [^bc]at When using a ^ inside brackets it means not including so this example would match 'pat', but not 'bat' or 'cat'
  • [0-9]{4} A group of 4 numbers, change the number in the curly brackets to change how many numbers.
  • [a-z]{4} A group of 4 characters, change the number in the curly brackets to change how many characters.
  • b.t Search for the character 'b' the dot equals a single character then 't' so would return 'bat' or 'bot'. To return 'beet' you would use b..t
  • ^dog the ^ means files starting with so "dog park" but not "bath dog".
  • \.pdf$ the \ means files ending with so "pdf" the $ means that this must be the end of the filename. Otherwise 'doc.pdf.txt' would match.
  • (cat|dog) Matches either word

FileBrowser isn't limited to just these examples. You can use the full list of regex searches.

Searches are not case sensitive.

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FileBrowser Pro advanced file search on Mac using regular expression filters