The macosxhints Rating:
[0 to 10 lights; 10 = perfect!]
- Developer: Sebastian Krauß [Product Page]
- Price: $0.00 [freeware]
Locator puts a very easy to use interface on top of the 'locate' command. Instead of having to open a terminal and type "locate" followed by a string of commands to help narrow and sort the search results, just launch Locator. You can drag in volumes, run grep searches, do "contains," "begins with, "ends with," and "is" style searches, search again within the results, and much more. As it's a full-blown Cocoa app, there's even a nice customizable toolbar. About the only thing that command-F has going for it above Locator is the ability to specify selected drives for the search locations; Locator seems to work on all or one, but not selected, volumes (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!).
The only real downside to locate is also the fact that it uses a database. If you create a new file and then use locate immediately, you won't find the new file in the locate results as the database is only updated at certain intervals. But this is another area where Locator shines. When you launch it, it checks how recently the database has been updated and asks if you'd like to update it now (there's also a menu item to update the database whenever you like).
I've been using Locator for a long time, and just had never thought to make it a PotW, until someone submitted a recommendation for it via the hint submittal form ... and then I realized just how often I use it (I almost never use Command-F). Locator is an essential piece of sofwtare on my machines ... the fact that it's freeware is an amazing added bonus.

