FoxTrot Personal Search can help you find the files you store on your computer drives. In this respect, the application supports searching for more than 300 file extensions, including various document types, like PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML and Apple Mail. Even though this tool is very easy to use, the availability of online help documentation is surely appreciated.
Like many other applications of the same type, FoxTrot Personal Search searches the locations you select and indexes the results. Luckily, the indexation can be set to occur automatically in the background. However, you can also start indexing on demand. It is good news that only the modified files are indexed again, which saves a lot of time.
When performing a search, you only need to enter the keywords that are likely to describe then intended contents. The good news is that the tool provides results that include not only the files’ properties but also their contents. It is also great that you can get almost instant results. Likewise, some file types, like images, PDF documents and text can be readily previewed, although occasional problems with responsiveness can happen.
One of the best features of the tool is that allows narrowing your search results. Fortunately, it is very good at doing this thanks to using heuristic methods to determine the most relevant hits. In addition, you can use the program categorization system, which is based on a file type, date and location.
All in all, FoxTrot Personal Search works quite well, better than macOS built-in search, in my opinion. The tool has some limitations that can be avoided by buying its professional version. I am not against some products having various versions at different prices. However, what I do not like is that some of the options continuously prompt you to buy a more expensive version, which makes the product seem crippled. And sadly, this is the case of FoxTrot Personal Search, which does not support scheduled background indexing, accessing search history bookmarks and templates or indexing networked contents, among some other things.
v4.1 [Sep 23, 2012]
- Gatekeeper support (CTM Develoment is now an identified developer).
- Indexing of Contacts has been fixed (Address Book).
- The default window position could be wrong when relaunching FoxTrot.
- Some files or items were only indexed by name, and not by content, on OS X 10.8. Miscellaneous improvements:
- Better previewing of Safari history items.
- The Library folder (which is no longer visible in the Finder) has been added as a predefined indexable location.
- The progress bar in the Dock is now also displayed during the first indexation.
- Reduced CPU usage during indexing. Bug fixes:
- A crash could occur when toggling the preview mode of a PDF document from plain text to PDF.
