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.