MacOS – Searching by file name (as opposed to name and contents) in Lion

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In earlier versions of OSX, when you search in a Finder window, it gave you the choice of searching by contents or file name. In Lion this choice seems to have disappeared, I can only search by content now. Is there any way to search by name in Lion?

Best Answer

  1. Open a finder window
  2. Open the folder you wish to search in
  3. Click in the search box
  4. Type the text you want to find
  5. A dropdown should appear like the one in the image below which allows you to select the 'Filename contains' option

Finder window

If you've already run the search and want to alter the search to only look for files with your search term in the filename, you can click the '+' button just beneath the search box and change the search type from there. See screenshots below:

Finder window 2

Finder window 3

Mike Scott has nice suggestions from the comments that are worth incorporating here to use the name: selector in spotlight.

You can prefix your search with name: as shown below
Finder window 4

This results in a window which you can select 'Filename' or 'Everything' from if you click the button labelled 'name' in the search box as shown below:
Finder window 5

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