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Find files

Press Ctrl+F to narrow the folder you are looking at. Press Ctrl+K to search Home and every mounted local drive, from any folder.

Filter the current folder

  1. Open a folder and press Ctrl+F, or click the funnel button in the pane.
  2. Type part of a name, such as invoice.
  3. Press Down to reach the results, then Enter to open one.
  4. Press Escape to get the full listing back.

You can skip Ctrl+F. With Type to search on, the default, start typing in a file view and the filter opens with what you typed. Press / to open an empty filter.

The filter searches the current folder and its subfolders, showing each subfolder result's path below its name. Queries match names only, ignoring case.

QueryFinds
invoiceAny name containing invoice.
trahsstrata-trash.svg. Queries of 4 or more letters and digits forgive one typo.
*.pdfNames ending in .pdf.
IMG*.MOVNames starting with IMG and ending in .MOV.

* is the only wildcard; ? and [] match themselves.

Results act like normal items: drag them, copy them, or right-click for the item menu. Space previews the selected file.

Search everywhere

  1. Press Ctrl+K, or click the search button in the header.
  2. Type a name or a piece of a path, such as cat-01.
  3. Press Up and Down to pick a result, then Enter, or click it, to open it.

Matching is fuzzy: the characters you type must appear in order, in the name or the path. cat-01 lists cat-01-photo.jpg first, and bucket-cat/file-01-noise.jpg below it.

  • Opening a folder goes into that folder.
  • Opening a file shows it selected in its folder, with quick preview open.
  • Alt+Enter, or right-click → Open containing folder, opens the result's parent folder with the result selected.

Press Escape, or Ctrl+K again, to close search.

Search indexes Home and every mounted local drive, but skips:

  • hidden files and folders, unless hidden files are shown (Ctrl+H);
  • generated trees such as node_modules/, target/, .venv/, .cache/, __pycache__/, and go/pkg/mod/;
  • anything a .gitignore or .ignore file excludes;
  • folders you exclude yourself.

Choose what search skips

Keep a large or private folder out of Ctrl+K results:

  1. Press Ctrl+, to open Settings, and choose General.
  2. Under SEARCH & FILTERING, find Global search exclusions.
  3. Type a rule, or click Browse… to pick a folder.
  4. Press Enter or click Add.

A rule is a folder name or a directory path:

RuleSkips
buildEvery folder named build, in any case, and everything inside it.
~/LargeDataThat one folder and everything below it.

A rule containing / is a path and must start with / or ~/, so project/build is refused. A folder name is matched literally, with no wildcards. Changes apply the next time you open Ctrl+K. To delete a rule, click the remove button beside it.

Good to know

  • Exclusions apply to Ctrl+K only. The Ctrl+F filter still finds files inside excluded folders.
  • Ctrl+K does not search remote shares. Inside a share, Ctrl+F narrows the loaded listing without searching subfolders.
  • Ctrl+K shows at most 100 results. On a very large disk, indexing stops early and the footer shows Partial results; excluding big folders helps.
  • In Settings → General, turn off Include subfolders to filter only the current folder, or turn on Open search results directly to launch files from Ctrl+K instead of previewing them.
  • In 10xer mode, press f to filter and s to search subfolders instead of Ctrl+F.

Full detail: the Keyboard navigation reference covers filter patterns, filter focus, and Ctrl+K keys.