Guide
Coming from Everything
Used Everything by voidtools on Windows? Most of what your fingers know works as typed. Here is what carries over, and the few habits a Mac changes.
Everything by voidtools runs only on Windows. Espresso brings the same idea to the Mac: its own index of the name and path of every file on every disk, results on every keystroke, and the same search language. Matching is exact by default, like Everything, and a search shows every match, sorted by any column.
What carries over
| In Everything | In Espresso |
|---|---|
| Index of every NTFS volume, kept current with the USN Journal | Index of every disk macOS can mount (APFS, HFS+, exFAT, FAT32, NTFS read-only), kept current with FSEvents. See Disks |
| Results on every keystroke, in a sortable list | The same, sorted by any column, details columns included |
| Search syntax | The same syntax, typed the same way (below) |
| Filters (Audio, Video, Picture, Document…) | Blends, on ⌘1 … ⌘9 |
| Bookmarks | Your Usual, saved with ⌘S |
| Search history | Past Orders |
| Macros | Macros, in Settings › Search › Macros |
| Match Case, Match Whole Word, Match Path, Match Diacritics, Enable Regex | View › Search Options: Match Case, Match Whole Words, Match Path, Ignore Diacritics, Regular Expressions (Barista Mode, ⌥⌘R). See Search options |
dupe:, sizedupe: | The same, in Espresso Free too |
| Global hotkey for the search window | The Shot, a search panel on ⌥Space from any app |
| Open Path | ⌘↩ Show in Finder |
content: reads files at search time | Pro content: searches text Espresso read in the background, so a search doesn’t open every file. See Inside files |
| ES, the command-line interface | Pro The espresso command, with JSON output, plus Shortcuts, Raycast, Alfred and AI assistants. See Automation |
| Network drives added by hand in Options › Folders | Turn on Index network volumes in Settings › Disks |
Searches that work as written
Each of these means in Espresso what it means in Everything:
| You type | Finds |
|---|---|
report 2026 | names with both words |
jpg | png | either word |
!draft | names without the word |
<invoice | receipt> 2026 | grouping |
"annual report" | an exact phrase |
IMG_*.heic | wildcards, matched against the whole name |
regex:^IMG_\d+\.jpg$ | a regular expression on names |
case:README ww:art | match case, whole words |
startwith:IMG endwith:final wfn:song.mp3 | start, end, whole file name |
ext:jpg;png;heic | extensions |
size:>1gb size:huge | sizes, and the presets from empty to gigantic |
dm:today dc:lastweek da:thismonth | modified, created, last opened |
dm:2026-01-01..2026-03-31 | date ranges |
parent:~/Desktop depth:2 root: | where the item is |
file: folder: empty: | files, folders, empty folders |
audio: video: pic: doc: zip: | kinds |
dupe: ext:pdf | duplicate names |
len:>100 count:20 | long names, at most 20 results |
width:>3000 height:1080 | image and video dimensions |
Everything else is in the search syntax.
What changes on a Mac
| On Windows | On a Mac |
|---|---|
A backslash searches the full path: docs\invoices | A slash does: docs/invoices, or path:invoices |
Drive letters: C:\ or D: | Disk names: disk:Backup, or online: / offline: |
attrib:H for hidden files | hidden:, or Options › Hidden Files (⇧⌘.) to include them in every search; the contents of apps and packages are in by default (Inside Apps and Packages, Lungo, ⌥⌘L) |
exe: for programs | app: for applications |
| The service reads the NTFS index with administrator rights | Espresso asks for Full Disk Access to see the folders macOS protects. Without it, it indexes everything else. See Getting started |
What Espresso adds
- Unplugged disks stay searchable. Eject a drive and it moves to Offline Disks, index and all. Espresso Free keeps two of them searchable; Espresso Pro keeps all of them.
- Forgive Typos (⌥⌘F), off by default: words of five letters or more may have a mistake, and the best matches come first. See Forgive Typos.
- Quick Look and a preview of the selected result, and file actions like Finder’s, with undo even after quitting.
- Pro Ask the Barista: search in your own words, on your Mac.
Not in Espresso
- ETP/FTP and HTTP servers. Espresso searches only on your Mac and sends nothing about your files anywhere. See Privacy.
- Windows file attributes (
attrib:), which a Mac doesn’t have.
Like Everything, Espresso Free costs nothing for personal use. Using Espresso at work needs Espresso Pro.