Cardinal

Cardinal Fastest and most accurate file search app for macOS.

Using Cardinal · Building Cardinal

Using Cardinal

i18n support

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Search basics

Cardinal now speaks an Everything-compatible syntax layer on top of the classic substring/prefix tricks:

• report draft – space acts as AND, so you only see files whose names contain both tokens.
• *.pdf briefing – filter to PDF results whose names include “briefing”.
• *.zip size:>100MB – search for ZIP files larger than 100MB.
• in:/Users demo !.psd – restrict the search root to /Users, then search for files whose names contain demo but exclude .psd.
• tag:ProjectA;ProjectB – match Finder tags (macOS); ; acts as OR.
• *.md content:"Bearer " – filter to Markdown files containing the string Bearer .
• "Application Support" – quote exact phrases.
• brary/Applicat – use / as a path separator for sub-path searching, matching directories like Library/Application Support.
• /report · draft/ · /report/ – wrap tokens with leading and/or trailing slashes to force prefix, suffix, or exact name matches when you need whole-word control beyond Everything syntax.
• ~/**/.DS_Store – globstar (**) dives through every subfolder under your home directory to find stray .DS_Store files anywhere in the tree.

For the supported operator catalog—including boolean grouping, folder scoping, extension filters, regex usage, and more examples—see [doc/pub/search-syntax.md](doc/pub/search-syntax.md).

Keyboard shortcuts & previews

• Cmd+Shift+Space – toggle the Cardinal window globally via the quick-launch hotkey.