FoxTrot Professional Search overview

FoxTrot Professional Search extends far beyond OS X's buit-in Spotlight, building on years of experience in search functionality refined within CTM's PowerMail and FoxTrot Personal Search products; it includes:

Multiple categorizations of search results, relevance-ranked
Document preview and full view, with secondary document-level search
Multiple indexed collections and timed updates without the application launched
Client-server access to peer-to-peer and dedicated CTM FoxTrot Search servers

FoxTrot Professional is relevant to anyone with documents saved for future reference; in field testing, the product has been especially well received in legal (law firm and courts), media (newsrooms researchers, ad agencies and editors) and mobile contexts (MacBook users with document collections).

Features:

create multiple indices from various folders and volumes
indexes content from PDF, HTML, Apple Mail, word processor, spreadsheet, presentations as well any extractable data from other applications: video, audio, iMessage, Contacts and other documents
search by document contents, metadata, filename, author, keyword, tags and metadata
categorize search results by a combination of relevance, age, location, item kind, extension author, main language, visibility, tag or author in order to narrow down the number of found items
preview most found documents within the application to search them further in a secondary search window; documents can also be displayed in a Quick Look popover or launched in their source application
highlight multiple found terms in distinct colors; secondary searches can be performed on identical or distinct terms
update the index on demand or at automatic intervals, even when the FoxTrot application is not visibly launched
quickly start a search from a FoxTrot system menu or command keys
select which file types are indexed for each indexed folder
limit the search scope to a specific folder and its descendants
use AND / OR operators between multiple search criteria
perform searches without keywords, by selecting all indexed documents of a given type (or all types) and categorizing down to the target - ideal to rediscover the contents of collected document and media assets, identify similar or duplicate documents and moved or delete selected items from within the document browser

What’s new in version 8.5

Important notes for version 8.x

FoxTrot 8.x is a paid upgrade for users of version 7 and earlier (free upgrade if you purchased FoxTrot after April 1st, 2023). To download the demo of FoxTrot version 8.x without replacing your current version, please visit foxtrot-search.com.

User interface improvements

When opening a found document in the document window, added a slider to change the length of the excerpts around each occurrence in the list.
Bookmark and history items can now be copied as text.
Font size can be adjusted in the bookmarks and history window.
Plain text or RTF previews now let search text (command-F) using a search toolbar at the top of the text view, instead of a separate search window.
In a previewed document, jump to an occurrence by clicking (without pressing the command key) in the colored mark in the scrollbar.
Added some hidden preference settings (HighlightColorSoft / HighlightBold / HighlightFontSizeFactor) to customize color and font of highlighted found words.
Added a hidden preference setting (TabWidth) to use shorter tab headers.

Miscellaneous improvements

Security improvements.
FoxTrot now uses macOS’s TextKit 2 by default, when viewing plain or rich text files; a hidden preference setting (TextKit2) has been added to use the older TextKit 1.

Bug fixes

Fixed an issue with the templates toolbar menu, when templates are organized in subfolders.
Fixed some scrolling or selection issues when opening PDF files in the separate document window, showing either the page thumbnails, or the Table Of Content.
Fixed a possible crash when browsing Spotlight attributes (from [then filter by Spotlight attribute] [other Spotlight attribute…]).
Fixed: using [then filter by Spotlight attribute] could work incorrectly since version 8.0.4.
“Open with…” contextual menu could previously omit some apps.
Various other minor bug fixes.

Full list of changes available here

View older FoxTrot Professional Search versions

4.2

(24 Reviews of FoxTrot Professional Search)

Comments
User Ratings

cgolson

Sep 16 2025

8.5

0.0

Version: 8.5

WoW...... this is the program to have. I am doing research - some 15 Gigs of data and I can NOT believe how great this program is.

Levelbest

Apr 10 2024

7.5.4

Version: 7.5.4

I wish I had discovered FTP years ago. This is one of the best apps there is IMHO. If you have not realized it yet, Apple’s Finder is not perfectly reliable. During ten years of legal wrangling with the VA I had so many research papers, submissions, rejections, and rebuttals, not to mention all the research to support my arguments, and not to mention fighting with the Air Force to correct my records, I was very frustrated on more than one occasion. I was using HoudahSPot or other Finder liked (spotlight driven) search tools to find words I knew I had previously used (but could no longer remember which revision of a document I had used that term in). But my spotlight driven searches would too often show no results - even after I rebuilt the Spotlight. FTP changed everything for me. It is obsessively easy to schedule all the databases to be updated once a day as in 3 am or whenever you say. It is also very easy to tell FTP to rebuild or update any particular database that you have been using. One of the best parts, besides finally having reliable search results that I was not getting in Finder, is that when I am looking for something in a text document such as Scrivener, I don't have to open each document to see why the search engine said there was a result there for me, That is how HoudahSpot and other Finder based search tools work, you have to pen each document to find and copy out the phrase you were looking for to support your new submission with your old arguments. FTP provides an actual preview that allows you to search in and copy out of - without having to open each and every document. It also has a feature that I think is somewhat similar to NeoFinder, although NeoFinder never really took off for me. NF is supposed to be this great idea where you can catalog all your disks and volumes and find what you were looking for even if a volume is not currently mounted. That is the same thing that FTP does only it does it far better, especially when it comes to text. I can confidently recommend this program, especially if you depend on doing a a lot of writing, a lot of research, or just wanting an accurate result when searching with Finder.

Pirx

Jan 24 2020

6.6.3

Version: 6.6.3

Actually, the personal version is much cheaper than the professional one. I buy it now, as Spotlight doesn't do the job.

Silkrd

Feb 10 2019

6.5.2

5.0

Version: 6.5.2

Apple's Spotlight is to FTP what TextEdit is to an advanced word processor. I've been using FTP for several years now: it's search capabilities are unmatched and I've never had a problem with their support; once they responded only after a couple of weeks but to tell me that my problem was solved, that it would be integrated in the forthcoming update and gave me a link to its beta version. For me, FTP is a 'must have'.

Bort1611

Jul 12 2017

6.0

Version: 6.0

Works perfectly, I can search through nearly 1TB of files (almost 200,000 of them) in a matter of seconds. I've never found anything else to compare with it, not DEVONthink or Yojimbo or Evernote or Leap or Yep any other program. It searches through my files perfectly, it ranks the results, it previews the files. It does what I want perfectly.

jdevriendt-1

Jul 9 2025