Hello All
I’m developing a cross-platform application and I’m looking for feedback from macOS users. With this application, you can search for text within files and for filenames themselves. It has been in development for a few months and now it’s ready for public beta. There is a free demo for macOS in the provided link, the minimum system supported is OS X Mavericks 10.9. The demo is a universal binary so it is compatible with both arm and intel based systems
Since macOS has grep and find built-in, what advantage is there to using MightyGrep?
From your website:
macOS files are not digitally signed, so you will encounter the error popup “MightyGrep is damaged and can’t be opened”.
Why don’t you sign the macOS application? (And yet charge $9.99 for it?)
I’m also curious how this compares to ripgrep and the Silver Searcher, but since your application is not signed I won’t run it.
Great question, I originally set out to make this application to simplify searching plaintext files. I wanted to combine the best parts of grep, find, and fzf into one convenient application. Being a GUI application, I believe it offers easier discoverability for search options. You can also provide an external editor for jumping to matches found, this really works well with vscode and sublime text.
On a side note, my favorite feature is tab completion for source paths, it allows me to navigate a directory structure without having to open a folder dialog
Put simply signing isn’t free. The unsigned popup is similar to one encountered on windows, where users just skip over it. If it is a deal breaker for macOS users, I’ll look into app signing for future releases.
Welcome to the forum.
Not trying to be snarky here, but you have no problem charging for a version 0.12.0 app.
There are other macOS find apps. Two I have are HoudahSpot, US$34, and Find Any File, US$6.
How does MightGrep differentiate itself other tools such as these?
(As you can see I’m not adverse to paying for such utilities, if they offer features I find (pun!) useful.)
Cheers and best of luck with your app.
Application signing seems to be much more of a deal breaker as compared to windows users, I might just get a developer account given the findings in this thread. Ideally, I’d like to have a larger macOS userbase first before investing in an apple developer account for signing.
My response to jcarucci highlights some key features but to sum it up: fast incremental searching on plaintext files. It’s as easy as opening the program and typing straight away, the pattern input box is automatically focused.
After looking at both products’ websites, here are my thoughts on how MightyGrep differs:
HoudahSpot: my program shows matching lines directly instead of requiring you open each file individually. I think HoudahSpot might be doing full text searches (i.e. searching text within pdf and docx) while my program does not.
FindAnyFile: my program appears to use more direct file finding: given a starting directory and filename filter, it displays a list of matching file paths.
Released version 0.13.0, key features for macOS:
Customization is available under File > Settings menu
Released version 0.14.0, key feature for macOS:
