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Cling

Instant fuzzy find any file
Act on it in the same instant
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compatible with macOS 14.0+ (Sonoma and later)
The Cling app interface showing fuzzy search results
Press Right Command + / (slash) to show/hide Cling

Find any file instantly

Cling leverages the power of fd and fzf to provide lightning-fast fuzzy searching of your entire filesystem.
Unlike Spotlight, Raycast, or Alfred, Cling can find system files, hidden files, dotfiles, app data, and more files that the Spotlight index doesn't include.

How it works?

Cling maintains an efficient live index of your entire disk, watching for changes and only re-indexing when necessary.
The powerful fuzzy search algorithm lets you find files with just a few keystrokes, even with partial or misspelled queries.

Act on selected files

With Cling's keyboard-centric approach, perform any action on files with quick hotkeys - no mouse required.
Use Quick Filters to narrow down results without typing common queries, and apply predefined actions like Open with…, copy paths, batch rename, or QuickLook.
Create your own custom actions with scripts in any programming language you prefer. Each script gets a pre-assigned hotkey so you can execute them instantly on your search results.

Everything for Mac

Cling strives to be similar to the popular Everything app from Windows, with macOS native integration and a focus on power users.
The UI is designed to be minimalistic and distraction-free, with a focus on keyboard shortcuts and fast rendering instead of pretty animations.

Index only what you need

Cling allows you to exclude files from the index, so you can keep your search results clean and focused.
The ~/.fsignore file lets you specify gitignore patterns for excluding files and folders from the index.
You can also disable whole indexes like System files or Library folders to speed up the search and reduce memory usage.

Performance considerations

Memory usage

To provide instant search results, Cling maintains an in-memory index of your filesystem. This can consume a significant amount of memory, ranging from 300MB to 2GB depending on the size of your filesystem and the number of files indexed.

Whenever Cling is in background (the window is not visible), the index will be marked as swappable to disk. This allows macOS to move the index to disk and free up RAM when memory pressure is high. Cling will reload the index from disk when you open its window again.

CPU usage

The most CPU-intensive operations are:

  • Indexing: when Cling is indexing your filesystem for the first time, it will consume a significant amount of CPU for about 1 to 5 minutes
  • Re-indexing: periodically, about once every 3 days, Cling will re-index the filesystem to keep the index up-to-date
  • Fuzzy search: When you type in the search bar, Cling will perform a fuzzy search on the index to find matching files

Searching will consume a lot of CPU but in short bursts, so every time you stop typing, you'll see high CPU usage for 1-5 seconds then it will drop to 0%.

When Cling is in background, it will pause searching and it will consume very little CPU to index file changes.

Battery usage

The impact on battery is proportional to how many searches you do and how many file changes will happen in the background.

Even though a search will look like it's consuming 100% CPU of multiple cores, it's a very fast operation and the battery energy used isn't that high in the long term.

Processing and indexing file changes is very efficient and will not impact battery life significantly.