How to find files by extension in Finder or Spotlight?

Hi.


This is shame but I was faced with problem which I can't solve in Finder/Spotlight — I can't search files by extension. May be I don't know something? Keyword "Kind" too abstract for this and searching not by exact extension. Wildcards never worked in spotlight. Thoughts?


P.S. Yes, I can do for example in terminal 'find . -name "*.txt" | xargs open -a BBedit' but this is not working for all apps and I don't want to return to eighties 😁

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 1, 2011 11:06 AM

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6 replies

Dec 30, 2012 5:51 AM in response to smirnoffjr

dusty thread, but for those arriving from google, it is (supposedly) possible to add File Extension to the search options available:


  • in Finder hit Cmd+F to open the Spotlight interface (without requiring a string to search for)
  • Hit the search parameter dropdown (by default "Kind")
  • Select 'Other'
  • Find and tick 'File Extension' from the list to have it show up in the short list.


I say 'supposedly' because its not working for me when i search for 'psd' on 10.8.2 😟


Hope it helps someone, Cheers, Tim

Aug 1, 2011 11:22 AM in response to igmackenzie

Still this is not search by extension. This is searching by filename/file contents where .psd occurs. So if you will have file blah.psd.zip or file with text .psd it will be in search results too. I agree in some cases this is enough. You can narrow your search with Kind:image or so, but still this is not generic solution.


To be more exact I have set of thousand files like:


a.test

b.test

...


a.test.res

b.test.res

...


a.test.stdout

b.test.sdtout

...



I want only .test files, not .test.res and .test.stdout

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How to find files by extension in Finder or Spotlight?

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