Finder search alternative on Mac, Fenn with AI
Oct 13, 2025
Replace basic Finder search on Mac with AI precision
You asked for an AI powered way to search your Mac, smarter than Finder. You want to search the contents of your files, then open at the exact page or timestamp. You also want privacy.
The pain in your words
“Can I use AI to search the files on my Mac, not just filenames.”
“I need to find a clause inside a 300 page PDF, not the file name.”
“My notes are in screenshots, can I search the text inside them.”
“I remember a quote from a 2 hour recording, I need the timestamp.”
Why Finder and Spotlight fall short
Filenames and simple content match, not how you think.
No reliable jump to a specific page, slide, frame or timestamp.
Screenshots and images are hard to search across at scale.
Video and audio are not searchable in a way that lands you at the moment you remember.
If you turn to cloud tools, you add privacy risk.
How Fenn solves it
Fenn is an AI powered file search engine for macOS that opens the exact moment inside your files. On device by default for privacy. Optional cloud indexing for speed and scale.
What you can search
PDFs and documents, then open at the page or slide you need.
Images and screenshots, search text inside them.
Audio and video, search phrases and open at the right timestamp.
A person’s face across images, video, and PDFs, then jump to the frame or page.
Five minute setup
Install Fenn on your Apple Silicon Mac.
Choose sources to index, folders or apps that hold your work.
Let Fenn index on device. You can enable optional cloud indexing later for speed up to about 100 GB.
Press the Fenn shortcut. Search in Semantic, Keyword, or Hybrid mode.
Open the result and land at the exact page, slide, frame, or timestamp, with contextual snippets.
Finder vs Fenn, at a glance
Task | Finder and Spotlight | Fenn |
|---|---|---|
Find by file name | Yes | Yes, plus context |
Search inside long PDFs | No | Yes |
Text inside images and screenshots | No | Yes |
Search inside audio and video | No | Yes |
Semantic search | No | Yes |
Privacy | On device | On device |
Mini case, from question to outcome
A researcher typed, “Is there a Mac app that replaces Finder with a smarter AI search.” After installing Fenn, they indexed their project folder. The first query, “thermal drift calibration method”, opened page 214 of a 300 page PDF. The second query, “drift explained by speaker”, opened a lecture recording at 01:12:45. The third query used face search to pull every slide and clip where the speaker appeared. The work moved from hunting to verifying.
Where this fits with your daily tools
Keep using Finder and your preferred viewers.
Use Fenn to find the moment, not the file, then open in the right app at the right place.
Privacy, in plain English
Indexing and search run on your Mac by default.
Your files and embeddings stay local.
Turn on optional cloud indexing only if you want speed and scale.
You choose sources, retention, and deletion.