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Basic Search

Liuer provides lightning-fast file search by name, powered by a background index that keeps your filesystem up-to-date.

  1. Type a filename or keyword in the search bar
  2. Results appear instantly as you type
  3. Use filters to narrow results
  4. Double-click or press Enter to open the file

In the left panel’s file search area, there are three separate keyword input sections:

Enabled by default and cannot be hidden. Click the “Add Keyword” button to add keywords — all keywords must appear in the filename to match.

Example: Adding keywords report, budget, and 2024 → filename must contain all three words

Hidden by default, enable via the dropdown menu. Click the “Add Keyword” button to add keywords — any one keyword appearing in the filename is a match.

Example: Adding keywords report, budget, and 2024 → filename matches if it contains at least one of these words

Hidden by default, enable via the dropdown menu. Click the “Add Keyword” button to add keywords — files containing any of these keywords are excluded from results.

Example: Adding keywords draft and tmp → exclude files with draft or tmp in the filename

Each section supports multiple keywords, and each keyword has its own independent toggles:

  • Case Sensitive: Enable for exact case matching
  • Whole Word: Enable to match only complete words, not partial matches
  • Regex: Enable to interpret the keyword as a regular expression (automatically disables the first two)

Multiple keywords within the same section are combined using that section’s logic. For example, adding keywords report and budget in “All Match” means the filename must contain both words; in “Any Match” it means the filename must contain at least one of them.

Toggle to enable case-sensitive matching. When off (default), readme matches README, Readme, etc.

When enabled, the search term must match complete words. Searching for cat will match “cat” but not “catalog” or “concatenate”.

Enable regular expressions for advanced pattern matching in filenames:

  • Character classes: [abc], [^abc], [a-z]
  • Quantifiers: *, +, ?, {n}, {n,m}
  • Anchors: ^ (start), $ (end)
  • Groups: (pattern), (?:pattern)
  • Alternation: pattern1|pattern2

If results seem outdated, click the refresh icon in the status bar to manually rebuild the index. In the Mac App Store version, you can also click the index directory at the bottom-right of the status bar to switch to a different index directory.