Coming from Windows

Searching a developer's Mac

Updated 2026-07-31 · 5 min read

A Mac with ten repositories on it has more files in build directories than everywhere else combined. That breaks most search tools.

The scale problem

One web project can hold 40,000 files in node_modules. Add Xcode's DerivedData, Rust's target, Python's __pycache__, .git internals — and the majority of files on the disk are build output nobody wants in results.

macOS excludes several of these by default, which is why searching for webpack.config.js returns nothing.

The setup that works

Contents: ripgrep. Respects .gitignore, skips binaries, parallel, fast.

brew install ripgrep
rg "functionName" --type ts

Names: an index that includes everything but demotes the noise. The right behaviour is not to exclude node_modules — you sometimes need it — but to rank it below your own source so it never crowds out a real result.

Project navigation: your editor. ⌘P in VS Code and ⇧⌘O in Xcode are scoped to the project and hard to beat there.

Things worth knowing

Grant Full Disk Access to your terminal, or find and ls will hit permission errors in protected locations.

find -prune is the difference between a two-second search and a two-minute one:

find . -type d -name node_modules -prune -o -type f -name "*.ts" -print

Check what is actually costing you space:

find ~ -type d \( -name node_modules -o -name DerivedData -o -name target \) -prune \
  -exec du -sh {} \; 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head -20

Why filename search matters more here

Developers know filenames. The question is almost never "which file mentions this" — that is what rg is for — but "where is AppCoordinator.swift", across half a dozen checkouts. That is a names problem, and it is the one Spotlight is worst at.

Common questions

Should I exclude node_modules from Spotlight?

macOS already does by default. The better behaviour is including it but ranking it low, so it is available when you actually want it.

What is the fastest code search on macOS?

ripgrep for contents. For filenames, an index beats any live search.