How to find a file on a Mac when you forgot its name
Updated
Searching by name fails when you do not remember the name. You almost always remember something else, though: about when it was, what kind of file it was, or something written in it. Each of those is a search you can run.
Start from what you remember
| You remember | Try this first |
|---|---|
| Roughly when you used it | Recents in the Finder sidebar, sorted by Date Last Opened |
| Which app you used | That app's File, then Open Recent menu |
| A word or phrase inside it | Spotlight with that phrase in quotes |
| What kind of file it was | Finder search with a Kind rule and a date |
| Who sent it or which site | Mail or Messages search, or the file's Where from record |
| What it looked like | Gallery or icon view with large previews |
Use Recents and Open Recent
Click Recents in the Finder sidebar and switch to list view. It shows files you opened lately from anywhere on your Mac. Sort by Date Last Opened and scan the top of the list. Most apps also keep their own list under File, then Open Recent, and some, such as Pages and Keynote, show recent documents in their open window.
Search the contents with Spotlight
Press Command-Space and type a phrase you remember from inside the document, such as a client's name or an unusual word. Spotlight searches the text of PDFs, Pages, Word and text files, not just names. Put an exact phrase in quotes. To see more than the top hits, choose the option to show all results in Finder at the bottom of the Spotlight list, then sort them.
Filter by type and date in Finder
- Press Command-F in Finder and choose This Mac.
- Add Kind and choose the type, such as Presentation, Image or PDF.
- Add a date rule such as Last opened date is within last 2 weeks.
- Switch to icon view with Command-1 and drag the icon size up in View Options, so you can recognise the file by its preview.
Look where it came from
- If it was an attachment, search Mail for the sender or subject. Attachments you never saved only exist inside Mail.
- If you downloaded it, open your browser's download list, or see how to see where a file was downloaded from.
- If it was AirDropped, check Downloads, where AirDrop saves files by default.
- If it might be in iCloud Drive on another device, open iCloud Drive in Finder, or check Recently Deleted on iCloud.com if it may have been removed.
If it may have been deleted
Open the Trash and search inside it. If the Trash was emptied, check Time Machine if you use it: open the folder where the file used to be and choose Browse Time Machine Backups from the Time Machine menu. See how to recover deleted files.
Describe it to FileSift
FileSift's search takes the way you would describe the file to a person, such as pdfs from last week or invoice from last month, and shows the filters it understood so you can adjust them. It can also search the text inside screenshots and scans, and group downloads by where they came from, which covers two of the hardest cases above. Results appear as large thumbnails, so recognising the right file by sight is often quicker than reading names.
Common questions
Why does Spotlight not find a phrase I know is in the file?
The folder may be excluded from Spotlight, the file may be a scanned image without text, or indexing may not have finished after a large copy.
Where does AirDrop save files on a Mac?
In the Downloads folder by default.
Related guides
- How to search for files on a Mac
- What to do when Spotlight cannot find a file on your Mac
- How to search for text inside images and screenshots on a Mac
- How to see where a file was downloaded from on a Mac
- How to find and delete duplicate files on a Mac
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