This project provides a Python-based solution for indexing and searching files on a macOS system. The tool indexes all files in a specified volume, stores their metadata in an SQLite database, and allows fast searching using semantic similarity and fuzzy matching.
Download the script here: https://github.com/earthinversion/macos_file_indexing
🚀 Features
- Index all files on a specified macOS volume
- Store metadata (file path, file kind, size, volume name, modified time) in SQLite
- Perform semantic search using FAISS and Sentence Transformers
- Fuzzy matching to find similar filenames
- Formatted search results in a human-readable table
- Fast and efficient due to FAISS caching
🔧 Installation
1️⃣ Install Dependencies
pip install faiss-cpu sentence-transformers fuzzywuzzy pandas tabulate tqdm sqlite3 numpy python-Levenshtein
Clone the Repository
git clone https://github.com/earthinversion/macos-file-indexing.git cd macos-file-indexing
3️⃣ Set Up the Database
- Edit the configuration in
config.yamlfile - Run the following command to build the indexing databasepython file_indexer.py
🔍 Searching for Files
- To search for a file, use:
python search_files.py
Do you want to rebuild the search cache? (yes/no): no
Enter filename to search: location_info.yaml
❌ Exact match not found. Suggested files:
+---+-------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
| | Path | File Kind | Size (bytes) | Volume | Modified Time |
+---+-------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
| 0 | /Volumes/QSIS_DISK/event_data_download_waveform_api/._config.yaml | AppleDouble encoded Macintosh file | 4.00 KB | QSIS_DISK | 2025-01-26 14:18:00 |
| 1 | /Volumes/QSIS_DISK/QSIS-Server-run/run_info.yml | ASCII text | 101 B | QSIS_DISK | 2022-06-27 23:55:45 |
| 2 | /Volumes/QSIS_DISK/qsis-server-inspect/data/run_info.yml | ASCII text | 2.46 KB | QSIS_DISK | 2023-03-18 02:08:30 |
| 3 | /Volumes/QSIS_DISK/line-bot-qsis/config.yaml | ASCII text | 140 B | QSIS_DISK | 2023-01-14 17:21:30 |
| 4 | /Volumes/QSIS_DISK/event_data_download_waveform_api/config.yaml | Unicode text, UTF-8 text | 511 B | QSIS_DISK | 2025-01-25 12:51:35 |
+---+-------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------------------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
🔍 Best fuzzy match:
+---+----------------------------------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
| | Path | File Kind | Size (bytes) | Volume | Modified Time |
+---+----------------------------------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
| 0 | /Volumes/QSIS_DISK/qsis-server-inspect/location_info.yml | ASCII text | 1.10 KB | QSIS_DISK | 2023-04-07 22:32:39 |
+---+----------------------------------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
Enter filename to search: wpa_supplicant.conf
✅ Exact match found:
+---+----------------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
| | Path | File Kind | Size (bytes) | Volume | Modified Time |
+---+----------------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
| 0 | /Volumes/QSIS_DISK/wpa_supplicant.conf | ASCII text | 161 B | QSIS_DISK | 2022-03-30 20:18:02 |
+---+----------------------------------------+------------+--------------+-----------+---------------------+
