Tr4wlFinds the files Spotlight can't see.
A complete index of your home folder - caches, app containers, the inside of .app bundles, dotfiles, node_modules - searched as fast as you can type.
14-day trial · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · $15.99 once, not a subscription
The difference
Your disk already knows. Nothing was asking it.
Search that scans the disk every time sees everything, but you wait for it. Search built on the Spotlight index is instant, but blind to whatever Spotlight skips. Tr4wl keeps its own index - built once, kept current by the filesystem itself, excluding nothing.
Same Mac, same query, same 38,232 results. Running the scan twice doesn't help - the bottleneck is syscalls, not the disk.
| Way of doing it | Sees everything | Instant | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reading the Spotlight index | inherits its blind spots | ✓ | nothing extra |
| Scanning the disk each time | ✓ | you wait for it | nothing extra |
| Keeping its own index what Tr4wl does | ✓ | ✓ | about 112 MB of memory |
These are three ways to build a search tool, not a scoreboard of products - plenty of good tools take the first two routes, and some can be configured to do more than one. The third route is the one with a running cost, and that cost is the memory above.
Tr4wl also isn't meant to replace Spotlight. Spotlight reads your documents and knows what's in them. Tr4wl only knows names - but it knows all of them, including the ones Spotlight was told to skip.
Where it looks
The places your Mac quietly skips.
Spotlight leaves out a great deal of your own disk, and most search tools inherit those blind spots. Tr4wl excludes nothing - not even the folders that make an index large.
- ~/Library
- App containers
- Inside .app bundles
- Caches
- node_modules
- Dotfiles
- Build folders
- External volumes
Directories it couldn't open on a full run: 0. That number is the whole point - an index with holes in it sends you back to Finder.
Examples
Things you can't currently find.
Every search below was measured on one Mac against a real 3,025,208-file home folder. The result counts are what Tr4wl actually returned.
package.json
Every dependency manifest on the disk, including the tens of thousands
buried in node_modules.
38,232 · 16ms
Info.plist
Reaches inside .app bundles, where Finder
won't take you without Show Package Contents.
1,934 · 14ms
com.apple.Safari
Into ~/Library/Containers - the sandboxed
per-app folders that Spotlight will not index.
75 · 17ms
.env
Dotfiles. Invisible in Finder by default, and easy to leave behind in
an old project.
135 · 16ms
^IMG_\d{4}\.HEIC$
Regular expressions when a substring isn't precise enough.
regex
<swift|kotlin> !test
Booleans: | for or, !
for not, quotes for exact, < > to group.
10,883 · 47ms
Filename search is instant because it runs against the index. Searching inside files narrows by name first and then reads only the survivors - there's no content index to build or maintain.
What's in it
Small app. No ceremony.
Substring search
Type any part of a name. Results narrow with every keystroke, with no wildcards to remember.
Regex & boolean
When you need it: |, !, quotes, grouping and full regular expressions.
Search inside files
Narrow by name, then look at contents. No content index, so nothing extra to maintain.
Live updates
The index follows the filesystem as it changes. Nothing to re-scan when you launch it.
Quick Look
⌘Y previews any result. Arrow keys walk the list while the preview stays open.
Saved searches
Keep the queries you run often. Filters for kind, size and date live in the sidebar.
Do things with results
Drag out, reveal in Finder, rename, move to Trash, export the list. No instant delete - nothing here is irreversible.
Global hotkey
Summon the window from anywhere. It stays running, so the index stays warm.
English & Korean
한국어를 지원합니다. Light, dark, or follow the system.
Nothing leaves your Mac
No analytics, no crash reporting, no update pings you didn't ask for. See below.
Full Disk Access
You're about to give an app the run of your disk.
So it's fair to ask what it does with that. Tr4wl needs Full Disk Access because that is the only way macOS will let anything read ~/Library and other apps' containers. Here is the whole of what it does with the permission.
| Reads filenames, sizes and dates | ✓ |
| Reads file contents | only for the files you explicitly run a content search over |
| Sends anything anywhere | Never |
| Analytics, telemetry, crash reports | None |
| Network use | one licence activation, then never again |
The index is a single file in the app's own folder, excluded from Time Machine. Delete the app and it goes with it. An app that reads your whole disk has no business also talking to the internet, so it doesn't.
Pricing
Pay once. Keep it forever.
- Two Macs per licence - your laptop and your desk.
- 14-day trial. Every feature. No nag screens, no crippled results.
- 15-day refund. No questions asked.
- Free updates for the whole 1.x line.
- Activate once, then it never contacts the network again.
If this ever shuts down, a final build with the licence check removed will be published. Your copy keeps working either way - the app is local, and so is its licence.
Questions
Reasonable objections.
How is this different from Spotlight?
Spotlight indexes the contents of documents, but it is told to skip large parts of your disk - ~/Library, app containers, caches, anything inside a .app, and everything a developer generates. Tr4wl indexes filenames only, but it indexes all of them.
They're complementary. Spotlight is better at "the invoice that mentions a client name." Tr4wl is better at "where on earth is that config file."
Why not just scan the disk when I need to?
That is a perfectly correct way to search, and it is complete. It is also slow, and it stays slow. On this Mac the same package.json query takes 7.5 seconds scanning versus 16 ms against the index - and running the scan a second time doesn't help, because the bottleneck is syscalls rather than the disk being cold.
If you only search occasionally, scanning is the better trade: nothing sits in memory. Tr4wl is for people who search often enough that the wait adds up.
Doesn't an index of three million files eat memory?
112 MB at rest, for 3,025,208 files. Filenames are interned, so the 873,526 distinct names are stored once each. There is no database - the index lives in memory, is written out on quit, and is memory-mapped back on launch, which is why it's searchable 0.01 s after opening.
Does the index go stale?
No. It follows the filesystem through FSEvents, so a file you save is findable immediately, with a full re-check once a day as a safety net. There is no scheduled refresh to configure and no re-scan when you launch.
Why isn't it on the Mac App Store?
Because the sandbox the App Store requires would block exactly the folders this app exists to search - other apps' containers and the parts of ~/Library that macOS protects. A sandboxed build would be blind in the same places Spotlight is, which would make it pointless.
Network volumes, NAS, Time Machine?
Not supported, on purpose. Indexing and change-watching both fail on network volumes, and Time Machine would multiply the index by every snapshot. You can add a network volume anyway and Tr4wl will warn you rather than pretend.
Intel Macs? Older macOS?
macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple silicon only for now.
Tr4wl reads directory entries straight out of the kernel and walks the returned buffer by hand - that is what makes it fast, and it is also the kind of code that can behave differently on another architecture. Rather than ship an Intel build nobody has ever run, 1.0 is Apple silicon only. If you want it on an Intel Mac, say so and it goes on the list.
Stop waiting on your own disk.
Download Tr4wl 1.0macOS 14 Sonoma or later·Apple silicon
Needs Full Disk Access to see everything.
Tr4wl explains how on first launch.