How to order spotlight finder search result by date modified AND kind on 10.14 Mojave

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Level 1

31 points

How to order spotlight finder search result by date modified AND kind on 10.14 Mojave

Hi all,

I rely on cmd-F in a finder window to find almost all my files. I like to sort my results chronologically, so I usually have the "date modified" column header clicked/selected. The issue is that this method does not group my results by kind of file. So then I click the "kind" column header and it groups everything nicely by kind, but the result no longer appear chronologically; the order seems to almost be random actually.

Is there a way to tell the finder how to sort my results according to multiple orders, like can be done easily in Excel? I.e. I want my results group by kind AND date modified, not one or the other. I've attached an image to show you how the results look when I sort by kind - as you can see, the dates seem arbitrary.

I've tried the Excel method of first sorting by date then kind, no luck. I also tried the reverse, no luck.

Running Mojave 10.14.6. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

MacBook Pro 15″, OS X 10.10

Posted on Aug 25, 2020 12:14 PM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

126,960 points

Aug 25, 2020 12:48 PM in response to Mike Amin

The Finder only offers singular, not compound (e.g. AND) grouping, followed by a single sort by choice. It may appear as though it is a spreadsheet, but is not. I believe that the best you can hope for with this method, is grouping by kind, and with an ascending modified date, by clicking on that column header.

When you use that word search (e.g. korea), it is looking for matches in filenames, in document content, and any other Spotlight Search category that you may have checked. Is that what you really want to do, or do you want the search for korea more restrictive than you have shown?

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Answer 2

Sean Dale1

Level 5

4,439 points

Aug 25, 2020 12:47 PM in response to Mike Amin

Try using EasyFind by Devon Technolgies instead, used to be in The Apple App store but not any more https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/freeware

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Answer 3

Sean Dale1

Level 5

4,439 points

Aug 25, 2020 1:15 PM in response to Mike Amin

Until such time as Apple improve the search function within the Finder I will continue to use EasyFind as it gives me more options. I'm not averse to using good third party Apps that do what they say on the tin

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Answer 4

VikingOSX

Level 10

126,960 points

Aug 26, 2020 3:14 AM in response to Mike Amin

Apple appears to be on an evolving path to triumph form over function, and a great many practical features have been engineered out of the Finder, or operating system, much to the chagrin of the users that depended upon them.

It may take a third-party, Finder replacement product to organize your search results as you like.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

251,283 points

Aug 26, 2020 9:28 AM in response to Mike Amin

Two suggestions...

Find Any File...

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.php

Hold Option or alt key when selecting Find to Find All.

EasyFind...

http://www.devon-technologies.com/download/

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Answer 6

Mike Amin Author

Level 1

31 points

Aug 25, 2020 1:07 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for this. The "korea" search was just an example, but I do in fact want Spotlight to search everything, as I mostly base my searches on content within the files. Any time I need something more specific, I use the + sign and add stuff like "filename contains...".

But wow that's unfortunate about the finder results. I feel like this is the opposite issue I had with Snow Leopard, which grouped by kind in chronological order by default, but the issue there was that I could not set the order of which types of files would show at the top (for example, I wanted PDFs to always show first but there was no clean way to do that).

How is it that Apple already HAD this feature built-in then removed it/changed the way results appear? Hoping someone comes around with a clever solution; I'm not adverse to jumping into the Terminal to accomplish this. Any other ideas?

Also I appreciate the suggestion of third party software but this is a function that should definitely be available within the OS itself (since they did it once already) so I want to do it that way and avoid third party apps.

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How to order spotlight finder search result by date modified AND kind on 10.14 Mojave

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