Find files on your Mac by what's inside them

When Spotlight isn't enough

Spotlight is built into macOS, free, and fine for most quick lookups. It gets harder when:

• You only remember the content. "The contract that mentions late payment fees" — but the file is called Agreement_final_v3(2).pdf.
• You remember roughly, not exactly. You search for "refund policy" and the document says "returns and reimbursements".
• You need to see why it matched. A list of file names doesn't tell you which of five similar drafts contains the clause you need.
• It's a mix of files and bookmarks. The answer might be in a PDF in Downloads or on a web page you bookmarked last spring.

How Memtrove searches

Memtrove keeps its own index of your home folder (or the folders you choose) and your Safari, Chrome and Edge bookmarks, and combines three kinds of matching in one result list:

• File name — including partial and fuzzy matches.
• Content — the words inside PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), PowerPoint (.pptx), Markdown, plain text, code and email (.eml) files.
• Meaning — finds "contract about late payment fees" even when the document never uses those words. With the Enhanced model this also works across English and Chinese.

You can add filters as you type, in plain words:

Type	Example
Time	last month, last Wednesday, last 7 days
Place	in Downloads
Kind	pdf, bookmark
Exact phrase	"net 30 days"

Combine them — last month in Downloads "net 30 days" — and every result says why it matched: In content, In file name or By meaning, with the matching words highlighted. The preview shows the document's outline and opens the matching section.

Press ⌥ Space in any app for a quick search panel, without switching windows.

Getting more out of Spotlight

If you'd rather stick with what's built in, these help:

• Search contents in Finder. Press ⌘ F in a Finder window, type your words, then choose Contents instead of Name in the suggestion menu.
• Search from Terminal. mdfind "late payment" searches Spotlight's index; mdfind -onlyin ~/Documents "invoice" limits it to one folder.
• Check what's excluded. Folders listed in System Settings › Spotlight › Search Privacy are never indexed.
• Rebuild a broken index. If Spotlight stops finding files it used to, sudo mdutil -E / rebuilds the index for your startup disk (it takes a while).

Memtrove and Spotlight side by side

Memtrove doesn't replace Spotlight for launching apps or doing quick calculations — keep using it for that. Memtrove is for the moments you're looking for a document by what's in it.

• Everything stays on your Mac. The index is local, there's no account, and searching works offline.
• It tells you what it's doing. The Status page shows names → content → meaning progress for each folder, so you know when a new folder is fully searchable.
• It works with Claude. Optionally, let Claude search and read your files through Memtrove's MCP server.