MacSearch

MacSearch is a Windows file searcher inspired by the popular Mac OS X utility called Spotlight, adopting a similar engine and design.

Just like on Mac OS X, you can always launch the app by pressing a keyboard shortcut, by default CTRL + Space, as it happens on Apple’s operating system where the default hotkey is CMD + Space.

At the first launch, MacSearch automatically starts an indexing process that scans all files on your computer to return the results to your search almost instantly. This way, it’s enough to type any keyword in the search field and wait just a few seconds to see the results.

What’s more, MacSearch places an icon in the Windows System Tray that enables you to play with its settings and define the file categories to be displayed in the search results, such as folders, documents, apps, bookmarks, music, movies and archives.

The same System Tray icon lets you perform a new scan to index the latest files that landed on your computer, but also apply a series of filters, such as date, size, place and word.

One of the drawbacks when it comes to this particular tool is the resource usage during the indexing process. MacSearch seriously slows down the system and in case you have multiple hard disks with large storage capacity, it could all take more than 10 minutes.

On the other hand, the results are indeed displayed almost instantly, but the program sometimes freezes on Windows 7 machines all of a sudden.

MacSearch is a handy piece of software, but it needs some improvements to become a top product and work flawlessly, just like Spotlight already does on Mac OS X platforms.