What the app does
Liuer is a native macOS search tool that covers both halves of file search in one app: filename search and content search.
File name search — runs on its own index, not Spotlight's:
- Results appear as you type
- Per-keyword regex, case-sensitive, and whole-word toggles
- Keyword groups: All Match / Any Match / Must Not
- Path-aware
"/"search; filters by type, size, date, and path; sortable columns - Background index (first pass ~1-2 min), then incremental; missed changes re-indexed while idle
Content search — finds the text inside your files, not just their names:
- Full-text search inside PDFs, Office docs, and ZIP/gzip/bzip2/xz/zstd archives (no extraction needed)
- Match count and surrounding context
- Open any matched file directly in your external editor
- Auto-detects non-UTF-8 encodings (GBK, Shift-JIS, Big5, and more)
Who it's for
Developers and power users who need to find a file by what's inside it. Two recurring cases:
- The file you remember by content but not by name
- Workflows that need both fast filename search and deep content search in one tool
What makes it useful
Launchers (Spotlight, Alfred, Raycast) return the matching file but not the matched text, and raw-byte scanners can't read inside PDFs, Office docs, or archives. Liuer:
- Returns match count and context, not just the file
- Searches inside compressed and office files without extracting or converting
- Reads legacy non-UTF-8 encodings correctly (no mojibake on GBK / Shift-JIS / Big5 files)
- Jumps from a result straight to the hit in your editor
