Software Alternatives & Reviews

Spotlight VS DocFetcher

Compare Spotlight VS DocFetcher and see what are their differences

Spotlight logo Spotlight

With Spotlight, you can find apps, documents, and other files on your Mac. And with Spotlight Suggestions, you can also get news, sports, movies, weather, and more.

DocFetcher logo DocFetcher

DocFetcher is a portable German/English open source desktop search application.
  • Spotlight Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-01
  • DocFetcher Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-24

Spotlight videos

Spotlight - Movie Review

More videos:

  • Review - Spotlight Official Movie Review
  • Review - How Spotlight Dramatizes Good Journalism

DocFetcher videos

How to use a "FREE" utility called DocFetcher

More videos:

  • Review - Docfetcher File Management Desktop Search

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Spotlight and DocFetcher)
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
File Manager
0 0%
100% 100
App Launcher
100 100%
0% 0
Clipboard Manager
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Spotlight and DocFetcher. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Spotlight and DocFetcher

Spotlight Reviews

Looking For Spotlight for Windows 10? Here Are Five Alternatives
However, Spotlight comes inbuilt with MacOS and I do really miss it on my Windows laptop. But, the problem is Windows works with NTFS and indexing on Apple File System (APFS) is far better. So it’s not possible to get a perfect replacement for Spotlight. But that doesn’t stop me and in the scout to get Spotlight for Windows 10, I found out some solid alternatives apps.
Source: techwiser.com

DocFetcher Reviews

  1. Pros, Cons

    I love DocFetcher! I discovered this gem of a program when Windows stopped supporting string searches in word processors other than Word.

    🏁 Competitors: the generic string search available in Windows, Agent Ransack, Locate32, Everything by Voidtools
    👍 Pros:    Beautiful intuitive interface. easy to use, once you set up the index.
    👎 Cons:    If you have a large collection of files to index, you will eventually be unable to search all your documents at the same time. you have to set up separate indexes and search each one separately. available in a variety of versions, up to 64 bit.|The help files are good. however, learning how to set up an index can be frustrating.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, DocFetcher should be more popular than Spotlight. It has been mentiond 12 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Spotlight mentions (5)

  • Just bought my first Mac/Apple device (Macbook Air M2)
    I want to add another tip: learn to use Spotlight Search to launch apps, search for files or make google queries. To do so, type COMMAND + SPACEBAR. Down the road, once you get comfortable with Spotlight Search, you can replace it with alternative apps like Alfred or Raycast. Using the keyboard to launch apps and open files, from anywhere, takes macOS to another level of mind-meld. Highly recommend. Source: about 1 year ago
  • First time at a Mac/Google shop - teach me your ways
    Spotlight Search - The equivalent of searching in the start menu on a PC, but it actually works. Source: over 1 year ago
  • macOS using 7 cores and 19 gigs of ram to perform subtraction
    It seems they are using it as intended. Apple lists what op does as a supported usecase.. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/spotlight-mchlp1008/mac. Source: over 2 years ago
  • App disappeared on Mac
    Hi there, sorry to hear that. It's possible that the app has disappeared from the dock after updating to the latest stable version that was released today (v3.8.0) but should still be in the list of apps that you have installed or discoverable via Spotlight. If it's still not there, please let us know. You should be able to install it from the downloads page and it should retain your preferences, but create a... Source: almost 3 years ago
  • The right way to use Finder?
    One other thing I forgot to mention is Spotlight. As long as you know the name of file or folder (or other details) you can find it quickly with Spotlight. Just click the magnifying glass in the menu bar, or press CMD + Space. Source: almost 3 years ago

DocFetcher mentions (12)

  • Tool to parse, index, and search local documents? - Windows
    I use https://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html to index and search large repos of docs. I use Papermerge for my digital file cabinet though. DocFetcher is good for searching an existing repository of files. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Docfetcher is a cross-platform free and open source desktop search application
    As they state, it is crap-free, free forever, cross-platform, portable, private (local only), and indexes only what you need. You can also set minimum and maximum file sizes to index. See https://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Career Advice for a fresh graduate who wants to enter Structural Engineering field
    What I'd recommend is setting up a digital and/or physical technical library. Download any useful documents, books, standards etc. and store them in a clear, concise folder structure. Then create an index of the library with a tool like DocFetcher. (Think of it as Google for your technical library) This should make it fast and easy to find the relevant information when you need it. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Looking for software to search inside zip files
    DocFetcher? https://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html. Source: over 1 year ago
  • How do you organize yourself?
    I use Outlook for e-mail and calendars. I use Evernote to store my notes. I also have a folder in Dropbox called "docs" where I store TXT (and others like DOCX and PDF etc) files for tasks/projects like the cisco firmware update example. I use DocFetcher (https://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html) to perform search on the stored notes in TXT / DOCX / PDF / etc. Source: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Spotlight and DocFetcher, you can also consider the following products

Raycast - Fastest way to control Jira, GitHub and other web apps

Everything by Voidtools - Everything. Locate files and folders by name instantly. Everything. Small installation file. Clean and simple user interface.

Alfred - Alfred is an award-winning app for macOS which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more. Search your Mac and the web, and be more productive with custom actions to control your Mac.

Agent Ransack - Agent Ransack is a tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently.

eesel - The new tab for work

Recoll - Recoll is a desktop full-text search tool. Recoll finds keywords inside documents as well as file names.