iPassepartout - 1.2.0

Spotlight is inspired at best, but at worst, unreliable unpredictable and cluttered. Now more than ever there is a role for third party search apps that can better Spotlight in certain areas. There is some choice: Locator is good for instant straight filename searches, but depends on the locate database, which has its own issues. EasyFind is neat and reliable, but slow for filename searches and very slow for content searches. At least both these are free, whereas iPassepartout costs $35. What does it offer for that?

In brief: a clean uncluttered interface, speed, and excellent previews. For straight filename searches it beats Spotlight into a cocked hat: an unambiguous list of filenames containing or matching the search term appears in seconds. Items in the list can then be acted on in a number of ways: opened, revealed, trashed, removed from list etc.

iPassepartout will also do reasonably fast content searches in all the formats checked in its preferences. And all this without any dependency on an index.

The jewel in iPassepartout’s crown however is that for many of the found items, a full size preview of the file content is shown when they are selected. Images are displayed to fit, Illustrator files are shown at full size but can be panned, and many text files are shown fully formatted or, if iP does not have access to the format, as text dumps. While these previews are iP’s major selling point, expanding the range of known formats is also where there is the greatest need for improvement. I also agree with other posters that search terms should be highlighted in text.

Finally, it amazes me that Softobe have sold any licenses at all, thanks to their absurd demo crippling system. It is quite impossible to test properly with the demo, but pester them for a limited-time license and you may well be hooked.

I wonder that nobody detected, that iPassepartout hangs, when a GIF-File with a transparent background is to display (spinning beachball)...!
I mailed this to Softobe and hope it will be fixed.

This utility has been sorely needed in OS X, a contender for the late, lamented "UltraFind" crown. Searching through a folder containing many subfolders and several thousand text and other (html, xml, pdf) documents for an "AND" search that included a compound (two word) string plus another word, it finished in only about two minutes or so and returned an expected number of hits. Doing "AND" searches is sorely lacking in SpeedSearch X, and the developer of that had no plans to implement when I asked about it. Minus one star for lacking "context returns"--where the search string is shown in context in the "hits" list. As it is, you have to search in each found document. The built-in document browser makes this easy to do, but I feel contextual returns are important for finding exactly what you're looking for--something that UltraFind had, and SpeedSearch X has. But I will be purchasing a licens for this, and hope for the feature soon.

what is this a joke???? doesn't run? just has some message in german or something? Why can't I run this software on an american system? The developer is nuts - don't you know the US is the largest market - if you make your product euro-only, how many potential users do you miss out on!!!!!!!! Unbelievable. Don't bother!!

I am a man of science, and the scientific true is only one. Softobe is only one of the software company that I like. The reason I come here again and write here is for a sense of justice. iPassepartout is a nice tool, and a very nice idea. And it works well. I would like any tool worked this way.
Ebe2 obviouvsly is trying to defend a competitor's product and to blaming this one. I don't want to guess why. So I say, I think that anyone can easily discover who, if me or him, is telling the true. Download that product, download this product. Compare them and choose. As you can see, dear Ebe2, I am not writing attributes to iPassepartout now. I propose a scientific comparison. And here the quality wins. The words, your words, will fly away, like lies in front of the science. And just to compensate, now I give this product 5 stars more, just because last time I wanted to give it 10, but I was not able.