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FoxTrot Professional Search Changelog

What's new in FoxTrot Professional Search 8.0.2

Jan 18, 2024
  • Bug fixes:
  • Under some circumstances and for some lists, the last column could sometimes be truncated.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 8.0.1 (Nov 22, 2023)

  • Bug fixes:
  • In thumbnails mode, the result list could become unscrollable when systems settings are set to hide scrollbars.
  • When switching from the thumbnails view to the compact result list, the width of the list may possibly be incorrect.
  • An exception could occur when right-clicking on the preview in the separate document window.
  • The blacklist window could behave incorrectly when a large number of files are blacklisted.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 8.0 (Nov 16, 2023)

  • FoxTrot Professional introduces - and includes - the new FoxTrot Duplicate Search app:
  • Since its 2005 launch, FoxTrot has prioritized precise searching and manageable results.
  • One approach is to search for whole words by default and suggest moderate use of wildcards.
  • Another is to offer multiple additive categorizations to focus the user’s attention on a manageable and plausible number of hits.
  • Our customer-focused work and survey results have highlighted the importance of minimizing duplicate and similar files prior to indexing. To this end, we are introducing a clean-sheet approach to duplicate identification and elimination.
  • Duplicate apps are a dime a dozen, and some obviously have pretty good features. However, we believe none are as thorough to iteratively sanitize an indexable data universe before using FoxTrot Pro - hence FoxTrot Duplicate Search’s unique features:
  • Four methods to identify duplicates
:
  • filename (with or without extension)
  • content
  • duration, for time-based media such as video and audio
  • a list of Spotlight attributes (e.g. for time-based media)
  • A dual list showing all potential duplicates on the top and all versions of the selected duplicate on the bottom.
  • Direct actions such as Move to Bin, Delete immediately, Open in source application, Quicklook, etc…
  • Powerful actions for batch selection by a number of criteria.
  • FoxTrot Pro action menu item to search for duplicate files among selected documents.
  • macOS 14 Sonoma support:
  • FoxTrot 8 has been fully qualified to run on macOS 14 Sonoma.
  • Indexing improvements:
  • PDF OCR: Scanned PDF documents can now undergo Optical Character Recognition on macOS 13 Ventura or later in order to index their textual content.
  • Images OCR: Scanned images in formats such as .jpg and .png can now be converted into PDF documents, allowing their textual content to be indexed via Optical Character Recognition on macOS 13 Ventura or later.
  • Search improvements:
  • You can now search for some Spotlight attributes that do not have a display name or description, and you can even manually add attributes that have not been declared by any application.
  • Added support for “logical size” and “text content length” when filtering by Spotlight attribute.
  • User interface improvements:
  • Restore last used values when adding or toggling search criteria.
  • Added “Open with…” contextual menu item, to open a found file using a specific application.
  • Added “Did you know” tips window.
  • Other improvements:
  • Improved thumbnail generation speed in Thumbnails View mode.
  • Added a “Getting Started” guide to the Help menu.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.5.6 (Nov 10, 2023)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a crash that could occur in the background indexer under certain rare circumstances.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.5.5 (Jun 29, 2023)

  • Several minor improvements.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.5.4 (Jan 23, 2023)

  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Updated the predefined locations to use the new DropBox folder.
  • Using the PlainTextFileLimitMB hidden preference also applies to .csv and .tsv files; and to HTML files as well when using Gumbo instead of Spotlight’s HTML importer.
  • Applying an advanced filter for [other metadata] now also includes the parent folder name.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Some plain text files were not displayed in the preview pane, when using FoxTrot’s built-in extractor instead of Spotlight’s plain text importer.
  • The PlainTextFileLimitMB hidden preference could have no effect in version 7.5.2 and 7.5.3.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.5.3 (Dec 7, 2022)

  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Added a built-in extractor to access Thunderbird’s (tested as of version 102.5) Spotlight cache.
  • Added predefined locations for indexing Thunderbird’s data if it had been used and configured in settings to make its data available for Spotlight, or to store messages as individual files.
  • Improved previewing Mozilla Thunderbird email messages.
  • Added a hidden preference (UseFullPathForParentFolder) to index the full path of the parent folder (instead of its name) in the “other metadata” field.
  • Some icons used in the login dialog have been improved for dark mode.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Corrected a bug which prevented the indexing of PowerMail caches unless the PowerMail importer had been manually extracted from the application and placed in /Library/Spotlight.
  • Fixed a possible crash when launching FoxTrot.
  • The FoxTrot system menu could use incorrect colors when toggling dark mode.
  • Corrected the the “Force-quit agents, and send report to CTM” functionality, when launching FoxTrot while pressing the command and option keys.
  • Removing folders from the “skipping these subfolders” list had no effect; corrected.
  • Fixed an inconsistency when using the “UseRelativePathForParentFolder” hidden preference.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.5.2 (Sep 6, 2022)

  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • On macOS 13 Ventura, improves how FoxTrot prompts the user to enable FoxTrot Full Disk Access.
  • Improved the display of certain document types using legacy third-party Quick Look plugins.
  • File types for which no Spotlight metadata importer is installed, but for which an application properly defines a Uniform Type Identifier, are no longer categorized as “other documents”; for example, .mkv files should now be categorized as “Video”.
  • Added information about the Uniform Type Identfiers of indexed documents in the crawler log file.
  • When re-enbling Spotlight from FoxTrot's preferences, delete any .metadata_never_index and .metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs flag files on the volume's root folder.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Type-completion suggestions did not work in non-latin languages such as Arabic.
  • Fixed some situations where macOS would report that the qlmanage process has crashed while displaying some found document types.
  • An exception could be displayed - or an incorrect highlighting of words could occur - upon displaying a PDF document containing invalid Unicode characters.
  • Fixed a crash with some third-party touch bar extensions.
  • Fixed some issues when buying FoxTrot using a recommendation code.
  • Fixed: when multiple colored Finder tags are assigned to a file, a single color badge was displayed in FoxTrot’s result list. (requires rebuilding the index)

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.5.1 (Jun 19, 2022)

  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • When the “by location” categorizer (categorize by path) was used in “view as columns” mode, there was no tooltip shown upon hovering over a truncated path; and truncated paths were incorrectly displayed, with no “…” indicator.
  • File types for which no Spotlight metadata importer is installed, but for which an application properly defines a Uniform Type Identifier, are no longer categorized as “other documents”; for example, .mkv files should now be categorized as “video”.
  • Searching did not work correctly when the search sources list was collapsed (i.e. when the “My Computer” disclosure triangle is toggled off).
  • Document excerpts are now more relevant, as their length is adjusted according to the layout of the search results list. Hidden preferences have been added to further control their length.
  • When indexing takes a very long time, a message window is displayed to suggest reading our FAQ; in case the user is not in front of his Mac, the estimated remaining time is now updated in this message window, and it is dismissed when indexing is eventually finished.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a possible crash in the “Recommend FoxTrot” window, when closing the window immediately.
  • Fixed a rare crash when displaying PDF documents that contain invalid Unicode characters.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.5 (May 9, 2022)

  • Important notes:
  • If you are using FoxTrot 7.5 beta 1, please install version 7.5 manually from the disk image that will be downloaded; a bug prevents updating automatically from this version.
  • FoxTrot 7.x is a paid upgrade for users of version 6 and earlier (free upgrade if you bought FoxTrot after March 1st, 2020). To download the demo of FoxTrot version 7.x without replacing your current version, please visit foxtrot-search.com.
  • New minimum requirements for version 7.5: macOS 10.14 Mojave or later.
  • Some new features of FoxTrot 7.5 require that you rebuild your index; if you do, you will need to rebuild it again if you switch back to FoxTrot 7.1.x or older. You can however use your current index without a rebuild to preserve compatibility with version 7.1.x, but then these new features won’t work. “Legacy index format” is shown in the “manage indices” window for indices that do not use the new index format.
  • New search features:
  • Added a new Spotlight attributes filter, to support any textual, numeric, boolean or date Spotlight attribute, in addition to the predefined set of Spotlight attributes that FoxTrot already supports.
  • Display the value of the filtered Spotlight attribute, in the excerpts column, when using [then filter by Spotlight attribute].
  • Display the list of Spotlight attributes of the selected file in the preview header.
  • Spotlight attributes specified as file system extended attributes (as opposed to being part of a file’s content) are now also indexed by FoxTrot.
  • Indexing improvements:
  • You can now choose to use an alternative to Spotlight's importer to process HTML files, email messages and plain text files, from the FoxTot First Aid window (which is shown when FoxTrot is launched while pressing the command and option keys).
  • Added a contextual menu item to specify whether to use Xpdf or Spotlight’s metadata importer, to parse specific PDF documents.
  • Added a command line to specify whether to use Gumbo or Spotlight’s metadata importer, to parse specific HTML documents.
  • When indexing PDF documents, words hyphenated across two lines (or across two pages) are now de-hyphenated.
  • Added a hidden preference to index the file’s relative path instead of its parent folder name.
  • User interface improvements:
  • Improved the display of email headers (Subject, From, To, Date) on macOS 11 Big Sur and later (as FoxTrot can no longer use Mail.app’s native viewer).
  • Added “go to previous / next file” menu items, to allow navigating more easily using the keyboard.
  • The “reveal in Finder” contextual menu was empty for files that have been deleted, renamed or moved, instead of showing their original location.
  • Other improvements:
  • Improved progress information when syncing an index to FoxTrot Attaché.
  • Improved upload to FoxTrot Attaché when using a shell script or an AppleScript.
  • Upload to FoxTrot Attaché now supports SFTP, if you manually install an SSH key and use the built-in shell script.
  • Added a Services menu item to search a specific folder from the Finder’s contextual menu.
  • Added a Services menu item to update a specific folder from the Finder’s contextual menu.
  • When dragging a folder from the Finder to FoxTrot’s Dock icon, you are now prompted for either searching this folder, or updating it in the index.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a bug when using the | operator with a quoted string (for example: ["new york" | newyork] did not find any document).
  • When toolbar buttons are displayed with text labels, the label could appear disabled when the button is enabled, and vice versa.
  • Search history could miss recent searches, in case FoxTrot crashed or was forced to quit.
  • Improved the drawing of certain file thumbnails.
  • When using the PlainTextPreferredEncodings hidden preference to index plain text files using some legacy character set encodings, these files are now displayed correctly in FoxTrot’s preview.
  • Fixed an exception that could occur when using Quick Look.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.1.3 (May 9, 2022)

  • Important notes:
  • FoxTrot 7 is a paid upgrade for users of version 6 and earlier (free upgrade if you bought FoxTrot after March 1st, 2020). To download the demo of FoxTrot version 7 without replacing your current version, please visit foxtrot-search.com.
  • Note to version 6 users: version 6.6.5 (see below) has been released after the release date of version 7, hence the software update mechanism will not prompt you to install it. If you do not wish to upgrade to version 7 yet, please download and manually install version 6.6.5 from foxtrot-search.com.
  • New minimum requirements for version 7: macOS 10.12 Sierra or later.
  • Bug fixes:
  • FoxTrot’s background indexer could crash when enabling index sharing, requiring to relaunch it.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.1.2 (May 9, 2022)

  • Improved support for Microsoft Outlook email messages:
  • Expanded support to additional versions of Microsoft Outlook email message content indexing.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Indices created by incompatible versions of FoxTrot now explicitly require a rebuild instead of behaving incorrectly. For this reason, we recommend all users of FoxTrot 7.x update to the most current version.
  • A crash or exception could occur upon highlighting searched words in very large PDF files.
  • Added support for the most recent version of Google Drive’s folder locations for uploading.
  • Since the user-customized list of Finder tags cannot be retrieved on macOS 12, the default tags are displayed instead.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.1.1 (Nov 3, 2021)

  • Fully compatible with macOS 12 Monterey:
  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Dark mode is now enabled when displaying .rtf files and several other file types.
  • .json files are now indexed (and categorized as XML files) even when no third party Spotlight importer handles them.
  • Excluded words can now also be specified at the beginning of the search string (e.g. -lake Michigan).
  • Some alert messages with a long text string could be clipped, requiring scrolling the text.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a possible application hang under rare circumstances, i.e. when calling a system command line utility which itself would hang.
  • Fixed a possible crash when connecting to a shared index, when multiple macOS user accounts are logged in (fast user switching) and connected to the same shared volume.
  • FoxTrot now displays an error message if a search string only contains excluded words (e.g. -lake) instead of returning an incorrect result.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.1 (Jul 12, 2021)

  • Indexing improvements:
  • More non-roman languages can now be indexed (Unicode version 13).
  • Symbol characters (e.g. #, %, &, @, §, ¶, $, €, ₿, ©, °, ±, ×, ℀, ™, ℘, ↖, ↠, ⇋, ∂, ⌀ etc) and emojis can now be indexed.
  • Very large plain text files (larger than 10 MB) can now be indexed entirely. A hidden preference (enabled using Terminal.app) has been added to enable this feature (replace {n} by the maximum size to index, in megabytes): defaults write com.ctmdev.FoxTrotShared PlainTextFileLimitMB -int {n}
  • The default text encoding (a.k.a. character set) to use for plain text files that do not have any encoding hint (neither a Unicode Byte Order Mark, nor a com.apple.TextEncoding extended attribute) can now be set using a hidden preference (enabled using Terminal.app, replace {encodings} by a comma-separated list en encodings to try, e.g. utf-8,windows-1252,macintosh): defaults write com.ctmdev.FoxTrotShared PlainTextPreferredEncodings ‘{encodings}’
  • Search improvements
  • The location categorizer can now use a multi-column table, instead of a list with disclosable subfolders.
  • User interface improvements
  • The scrollbar of previewed documents now shows a tick mark for each occurrence of a searched word; command-click on a tick mark scrolls to the exact occurrence location; shift-click on the scrollbar scrolls to the next or previous occurrence.
  • Font size can now be customized for the left pane (search sources and categorizer) and the result list.
  • Added a preference to use criteria from the "system menu" search template, instead of the last used criteria, for new searches.
  • Bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements
  • On macOS 11.4, a message could appear to suggest granting FoxTrot "full disk access" even when such access had already been granted.
  • On Apple Silicon Macs, pre-building the thumbnails for every found files (in thumbnails view mode) could hang.
  • Using [contains the regular expression] advanced filter to find a possibly empty content or metadata attribute (e.g. ^.{0,100}$ in order to find a string whose length is between 0 and 100 characters) would fail to find empty strings.
  • Using an advanced filter to find documents whose content is exactly, or ends with, a given string was not functioning properly.
  • Hidden preferences can now be set using the com.ctmdev.foxtrotshared domain, so they apply indifferently to FoxTrot Personal, Professional or Server.
  • The “DEVONthink 3 Storage” predefined location has been updated.
  • Additional overall stability improvements.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.0.2 (Sep 17, 2020)

  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Ready for running native operation on Apple Silicon Macs (a native build will be made available when Apple introduces such hardware).
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a crash that only occurred on Macs with 22 or more CPU cores.
  • Fixed a crash of the extractor process when dealing with some invalid PDF files.
  • Fixed a bug when sending an automated report to CTM Development, when FoxTrot has not been granted full disk access in Security & Privacy system preference.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.0.1 (Aug 4, 2020)

  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Added a “do not show again” checkbox in the move to folder / move to trash confirmation dialog.
  • Deleting files, moving to another folder, or editing Finder tags for a selection of multiple found files is now much faster.
  • Pressing the option key in the “search in folder” popup menu now allows removal of selected recently used folders.
  • Improved appearance on macOS 11 Big Sur.
  • Bug fixes:
  • When displaying a file from a shared index (FoxTrot Server or 5-user license), the preview was empty (instead of text-only) in version 7.0 if the shared folder was not mounted or incorrectly configured.
  • The highlighting of found words in the preview was not working correctly when using "includes neighboring words" with a single quoted string, or with partial words with an * wildcard.
  • On macOS 10.15 and later, an exception dialog could be displayed when dragging a file from the result list.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 7.0 (Aug 4, 2020)

  • Important notes:
  • FoxTrot 7 is a paid upgrade for users of version 6 and earlier.
  • New minimum requirements: macOS 10.12 Sierra or later.
  • Performance improvements:
  • Much improved indexing time on multicore machines, especially when the index is stored on an SSD. This is however highly dependent on the type and size of the indexed files, and on the hardware configuration.
  • Improved application launch time, when using multiple indices.
  • Displaying large plain text documents containing no return character is now much faster.
  • New search features:
  • Added an “All items of type” criterion to find all indexed files of a given file type (or even all indexed files, regardless of their file type), without searching for any particular text string. This can also be used in conjunction with the filters, to perform advanced filename, date, or regular expression searches.
  • The date categorizer has been much improved and is easier to use; added a contextual menu to change the scale of the histogram, and to choose between creation or modification dates.
  • Added a “filename extension” categorizer that can be used in addition to “item kind”.
  • Added a visible / invisible categorizer.
  • Other searching or indexing improvements:
  • Added more options to decide whether to index or not files in packages, applications and frameworks.
  • User interface improvements:
  • Dark mode support (macOS 10.14 Mojave and later).
  • Modernized some UI elements: tab bar, icons etc.
  • The thumbnail view has been improved: it is faster and more responsive.
  • The PDF pages thumbnail view is now much faster to draw.
  • Added a preference pane to customize the search history.
  • Added a contextual menu in the bookmarks and history window.
  • The proximity slider now shows a more precise tooltip.
  • When multiple search criterion fields are visible in the search window, empty ones are now always ignored (you previously had to remove unused ones).
  • Added a “Search…” menu item, with command-L shortcut, to move the keyboard focus to the search field.
  • The contextual menu “reveal in finder” now shows the complete path as a submenu.
  • The “copy” menu item now copies the path of the selected files.
  • Added a “display type” toolbar item to use alternate methods to preview documents (plain text, Quick Look preview…).
  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Use a modern API for language identification on macOS 10.13 and later.
  • Highlighting found occurrences did not work for documents created with recent versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
  • Added a hidden preference to use the NaturalLanguage framework for language identification on macOS 10.14 and later (defaults write com.ctmdev.FoxTrot UseNaturalLanguageIdentification -bool YES). This is slower, but may be more accurate.
  • More secure network encryption (TLS 1.3) for shared indices.
  • Estimation of the remaining indexing time is now more reliable.
  • Some files could previously be added to the blacklist, although they had made the extractor crash only once; some third-party extractors can crash randomly, even when processing valid files.
  • Indexer log files now contain much less useless information.
  • Improved preview of some document types (e.g. Scrivener files).
  • A hidden (command-line) preference has been added to remove or speed up the animation of the categorizer pane.
  • Some search templates could not work properly from the FoxTrot system menu.
  • OpenMeta tags are no longer indexed, as they were replaced by Finder tags years ago. Note that you may need to rebuild your index if some tags appear twice in the tag categorizer.
  • The regular expression engine now consider all unicode letter characters (instead of just ASCII letter characters) when evaluating w or b.
  • Bug fixes:
  • The indexer could become unresponsive, and could refuse to stop, when compacting a very large index stored on a hard drive.
  • The services menu could not work with some applications.
  • The thumbnail view could sometimes draw a thumbnail from a different file.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.5.2 Build 1887 (Jul 18, 2018)

  • Fixed a case where connecting to a FoxTrot server would ask the user to trust the server's certificate, even if the certificate is already trusted. This was only occurring on macOS 10.13, when connecting to the server by specifying its hostname, and if the server was not using a CA-issued certificate.
  • More detailed error logging if connecting to a FoxTrot Server fails due to a certificate or TLS problem.
  • Miscellaneous minor bug fixes and improvements

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.5.1 Build 1873 (Jun 20, 2018)

  • Client/Server bug fix (FoxTrot Pro multi-user and FoxTrot Search Server). In some specific circumstances, connecting to a FoxTrot Server (or shared FoxTrot Pro index) could fail, and would not show any error message.
  • Miscellaneous minor bug fixes and improvements.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.5 Build 1859 (Jun 6, 2018)

  • Important notes:
  • FoxTrot 6 is a paid upgrade for users of version 5 and earlier.
  • Version 6.5 introduces an updated index format. Indices created by version 6.0.4, and used without rebuilding with version 6.5, should remain compatible if you revert to version 6.0.4. However if you rebuild your index with version 6.5, you will need to rebuild it again in version 6.0 if you revert / downgrade to version 6.0.4.
  • Increased performance:
  • Some advanced searches are now faster.
  • Long searches now display a progress indicator at the bottom of the result list, instead of the indeterminate spinning indicator.
  • Long searches can now be aborted, by clicking the progress indicator at the bottom of the result list.
  • A new faster compression format (zstandard) is used, both for the index file and for the network traffic of the shared indices and for FoxTrot Server. Note that when rebuilding an index, its size may shrink a bit, due to the fact that zstandard will have learned from the previous version how to optimize compression for this specific index.
  • Feature enhancements:
  • Added some very precise date, filename, and content filters. Regular expression searches are now performed from the filters only (in addition to the FoxTrot Query syntax).
  • When a found document is opened in a separate document window, the search field’s menu now shows additional options for “exact strings” and “regular expressions” searches (e.g., case sensitivity).
  • Changed the FoxTrot Query syntax for searching documents not containing a given regular expression (-`expression` instead of !`expression`)
  • FoxTrot now replaces curly quotes by straight quotes in the search field, to conform to the FoxTrot Query syntax.
  • Client/Server enhancements (FoxTrot Pro multi-user and FoxTrot Search Server):
  • Better support for IPv6; FoxTrot can now be used to connect to a shared FoxTrot Pro index on a remote machine using Back To My Mac.
  • When connecting to a FoxTrot Server (or shared FoxTrot Pro) with multiple indices, concerning files on the same shared folder, and this shared folder is not currently mounted, then only prompt the user once about mounting the shared folder or not.
  • Added “reset saved login information” item in the “servers” toolbar menu, to clear any remembered login and password for a connected FoxTrot Server or shared FoxtTrot Pro index.
  • Added a contextual menu to the Search Sources list, to remove manually added FoxTrot Servers.
  • Miscellaneous enhancements and other fixes:
  • An alert “your registration code is currently used on another computer” could appear when the other Macs use a different registration code.
  • In some cases, when searching multiple indices simultaneously, some excerpts could be missing in the result list, or some excerpts could belong to another document.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.0.4 Build 1719 (Mar 6, 2018)

  • Bug fixes:
  • The Quick Look window could appear when launching FoxTrot.
  • We are pleased to announce that Apple will be releasing a fix to the 10.13 PDF highlighting bug in their forthcoming macOS 10.13.4 update.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.0.3 Build 1718 (Mar 1, 2018)

  • Improvements:
  • Small speed optimization when creating an index.
  • Bug fixes:
  • The individual files hidden in the .ftindex file package previously could not exceed 16 GB.
  • Fixed a compatibility problem with indices created by the upcoming version 6.5.
  • The “resource hogs” window could fail to display any result in certain circumstances.
  • The Quick Look window could appear after using FoxTrot’s system menu, if the application was not already launched.
  • The search window could fail to open in some specific circumstances.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.0.2 Build 1713 (Dec 5, 2017)

  • High Sierra bug fixes:
  • On macOS 10.13 High Sierra, the content of the search field could disappear when it did not have the keyboard focus.
  • On APFS-formatted volumes only (macOS 10.13 High Sierra), folders containing many documents could be indexed very, very slowly.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.0.1 Build 1706 (Aug 25, 2017)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Under specific circumstances, FoxTrot could prompt for an “anonymous password” upon launching but then would refuse any typed password. (How rude.)
  • A memory leak was unforturnately introduced in version 6.0, which could cause some severe performance issues under certain circumstances.
  • Fixed a case where an “error 999” could prevent FoxTrot from launching an index.
  • Fixed a case where a file permission problem could prevent FoxTrot from launching or creating an index.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.0 Build 1688 (Jul 12, 2017)

  • Increased performance:
  • Optimized some operations when the index is stored on a rotational HDD.
  • Reduce file fragmentation.
  • Reduced memory usage when displaying some HTML or PDF files.
  • Now built using Apple’s latest Xcode version 8 compilers.
  • Feature enhancements:
  • Added option to only index filenames when indexing contents.
  • Reduced the number of situations where the “manage indices” window is partially empty, when the indexer is busy.
  • “Copy path” added to the contextual menu (search results, indexed locations, black list).
  • Show missing disk space when attempting manual compact and disk is almost full.
  • File paths are now clickable with a popup menu to reveal in finder any parent folder.
  • Also display in the status bar the number of items found outside of the target folder, when searching only in a specific folder.
  • Allow drag-select to toggle multiple checkboxes (manage indices’s file types).
  • Added a button to rebuild an index, when it is not started.
  • Enhanced multi-user and client-server features and license management:
  • Simplified the File Sharing integration to reduce the risk of having access only to document text instead of rich documents from mounted servers.
  • Implemented certificate trust management for authenticated connections (now you know what the letters CTM stands for).
  • Updated to use a modern OpenSSL version.
  • After 5 failed login attempts, FoxTrot delays logging in for 15 s, then 30 s, 60 s, etc.
  • Implemented better verification of simultaneous usage on multiple machines.
  • Code modernization:
  • Implements modern windows (with no window title).
  • Modernized some icons and widgets.
  • New minimum requirements: macOS 10.9 or later.
  • Removed dependency to deprecated QuickTime to preview video and audio files.
  • Better diagnostics:
  • Logged file exceptions include filenames.
  • More detailed logging when in indexing is very slow.
  • When processing a specific file takes longer than usual, the file name is now displayed in the “manage indices” progress.
  • Synchronization of index files to iPad’s and iPhones running FoxTrot Attaché search:
  • Added built-in Google Drive support for maintaining up-to-date index archives from FoxTrot Pro or Server to iOS devices running FoxTrot Attaché Search.
  • Miscellaneous enhancements and other fixes:
  • Highlighting of [washington -"new york" boston] (no longer highlights occurrences of [new] or [york]).
  • Highlighting of a quoted string (or “consecutive words“) with the same word repeated (e.g., “to be, or not to be”) would not work correctly.
  • The index could stop responding when attempting to search for regular expressions on an index not configured to “store document textual contents”.
  • An error message is now displayed when attempting to search for exact strings on an index not configured to “store document textual contents”.
  • Possible crash fixed on startup in certain circumstances.
  • On macOS 10.11 and later, pinch-zooming would not work as expected.
  • An “unregistered” dialog could appear when launching FoxTrot, when using regular expressions or exact matches.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.0b9 Build 1687 FC 2 (Jul 10, 2017)

  • Bug fixes:
  • On machines configured to use Back To My Mac, a dialog could appear claiming that the registration code was used on another machine.
  • The application could crash at launch on macOS 10.10 Yosemite.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 6.0b7 Build 1680 FC 1 (Jun 29, 2017)

  • Increased performance:
  • Optimized some operations when the index is stored on a rotational HDD.
  • Reduce file fragmentation.
  • Reduced memory usage when displaying some HTML or PDF files.
  • Now built using Apple’s latest Xcode version 8 compilers.
  • Feature enhancements:
  • Added option to only index filenames when indexing contents.
  • Reduced the number of situations where the “manage indices” window is partially empty, when the indexer is busy.
  • “Copy path” added to the contextual menu (search results, indexed locations, black list).
  • Show missing disk space when attempting manual compact and disk is almost full.
  • File paths are now clickable with a popup menu to reveal in finder any parent folder.
  • Also display in the status bar the number of items found outside of the target folder, when searching only in a specific folder.
  • Allow drag-select to toggle multiple checkboxes (manage indices’s file types).
  • Added a button to rebuild an index, when it is not started.
  • Enhanced multi-user and client-server features and license management:
  • Simplified the File Sharing integration to reduce the risk of having access only to document text instead of rich documents from mounted servers.
  • Implemented certificate trust management for authenticated connections (now you know what the letters CTM stands for).
  • Updated to use a modern OpenSSL version.
  • After 5 failed login attempts, FoxTrot delays logging in for 15 s, then 30 s, 60 s, etc.
  • Implemented better verification of simultaneous usage on multiple machines.
  • Code modernization:
  • Implements modern windows (with no window title).
  • Modernized some icons and widgets.
  • New minimum requirements: macOS 10.9 or later.
  • Removed dependency to deprecated QuickTime to preview video and audio files.
  • Better diagnostics:
  • Logged file exceptions include filenames.
  • More detailed logging when in indexing is very slow.
  • When processing a specific file takes longer than usual, the file name is now displayed in the “manage indices” progress.
  • Synchronization of index files to iPad’s and iPhones running FoxTrot Attaché search:
  • Added built-in Google Drive support for maintaining up-to-date index archives from FoxTrot Pro or Server to iOS devices running FoxTrot Attaché Search.
  • Miscellaneous enhancements and other fixes:
  • Highlighting of [washington -"new york" boston] (no longer highlights occurrences of [new] or [york]).
  • Highlighting of a quoted string (or “consecutive words“) with the same word repeated (e.g., “to be, or not to be”) would not work correctly.
  • The index could stop responding when attempting to search for regular expressions on an index not configured to “store document textual contents”.
  • An error message is now displayed when attempting to search for exact strings on an index not configured to “store document textual contents”.
  • Possible crash fixed on startup in certain circumstances.
  • On macOS 10.11 and later, pinch-zooming would not work as expected.
  • An “unregistered” dialog could appear when launching FoxTrot, when using regular expressions or exact matches.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.7.1 Build 1442 (Mar 15, 2017)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a possible crash or hang when launching the FoxTrot application, especially for users having a lot of files with Finder tags.
  • Fixed a case where updating or rebuilding an index would systematically hang.
  • Stability improvements:
  • FoxTrot disk images are now signed so as to avoid issues with “Gatekeeper Path Randomization” introduced in macOS 10.12 Sierra.
  • Display a warning message when “Gatekeeper Path Randomization” could cause FoxTrot to misbehave.
  • Added more detailed information in the log file when an unexpected file error would occur.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.7 Build 1436 (Sep 20, 2016)

  • Various minor fixes and enhancements.
  • Full compatibility with macOS 10.12 Sierra:
  • Note: we have filed a bug report to Apple regarding a PDF text hilight issue on macOS 10.12 and hope it will be fixed within their next software update
  • New in-app store:
  • New, more detailed in-application purchase and upgrade feature now using Paddle processing in replacement of Kagi (R.I.P.) The new reseller is now based in the UK and dynamically offers our products without sales tax to Americas, Asia and Africa or with the appropriate VAT rates within the European Union, complete with VAT receipts.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.5.5 Build 1423 (Jan 14, 2016)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Version 5.5.4 of FoxTrot would fail to launch on OS X 10.7 to 10.9.
  • The contents of certain Apple Mail messages were improperly indexed on OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.5.4 Build 1420 (Jan 12, 2016)

  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Binary precompiled header files with a .pch filename extension are no longer indexed as plain text source code files.
  • Added a command-line preference to disable indexing files with a given filename extension (optionally only when the file has a specific header).
  • Added a command-line preference to override some filename extensions (optionally only when the file has a specific header); this allows indexing files with a known format (or a textual format), but using a non-standard filename extension.
  • Bug fixes:
  • The contents of certain Apple Mail messages were improperly indexed on OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
  • Software update would fail to install new FoxTrot versions.
  • Stability improvements.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.5.2 Build 1411 (Nov 29, 2015)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Under certain specific circumstances, the indices list could be empty, both in the search window and in the “Manage Indices” window.
  • Under certain specific circumstances, some menu or toolbar items could stop working (i.e. layout items, Connect to Server in Pro, etc…).
  • Fixed an occasional crash / hang on application startup.
  • Fixed a case where some documents could be partially indexed (when their content contains some NULL characters).
  • In version 5.5.1, FoxTrot Professional would fail to connect to a FoxTrot Server running locally on the same machine.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.5 Build 1386 (Aug 18, 2015)

  • Enhanced search features:
  • Search string word completion: when typing words in the search field, partial words are autocompleted. Suggestions are based on the content of your index.
  • Typo corrections: when searching for a misspelled word, a similar word is suggested.
  • Added the ability to search for regular expressions.
  • Added the ability to search in the file contents only, ignoring the filenames and other metadata.
  • Added “log file”, “XML file” and “file archive” types in the “file types” category.
  • Added an “all criteria / any criterion (AND / OR)” popup menu when combining multiple criteria.
  • Expanded document viewing:
  • Added support for searching and highlighting regular expressions occurrences in all supported document types, including PDF, Word, Pages, Excel etc.
  • Added a popup menu in the search field of the document window to toggle between Words, Consecutive Words, Exact String, Regular Expression, or FoxTrot query.
  • Enhanced indexing:
  • By default, the content of log files and generic XML files is no longer indexed. This usually enhances the quality and the performance of the index, as these files contain many non relevant data. This can be toggled when adding a custom folder to the list of indexed locations.
  • Added the ability to disable some file types for content indexing, when indexing predefined locations, such as Documents or Downloads.
  • Outlook 2015, Dropbox and iCloud Drive support
  • Added a “view resource hogs” button in the index configuration window; this can help removing from your index huge files that contain few interesting text but many encoded, garbled or numerical data.
  • Email messages stored or exported to the .mbox format with a ‘TEXT’ HFS file type are no longer indexed by contents (this would index a bunch of encoded data).
  • Contact’s phone numbers are also indexed unformatted (with no space).
  • When a third party Spotlight metadata importer has a memory leak, it is now periodically relaunched to prevent using all the available memory.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Some files could be displayed using their “title” metadata attribute instead of the filename; some items (email messages...) could be displayed using their (cryptic) filename instead of the title.
  • “Update folder in running indices” was updating all files by content, regardless of the index settings.
  • When adding a file to the blacklist, or when disabling some file types in the “index contents of files” list, the previously indexed contents of those files was only removed from the index when rebuilding entirely.
  • When displaying found words in some PDF documents, the document could be scrolled horizontally excessively.
  • Fixed a case where FoxTrot could fail to update the index, after FoxTrot’s preferences have been erased.
  • Fixed a bug in FoxTrot’s system menu on OS X 10.8.
  • A “can’t connect” error message could happen in some circumstances, and has been fixed.
  • FoxTrot’s system menu could appear twice after rebooting.
  • A quick test shown no issue on OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
  • FoxTrot could be slow to launch when Finder tags are used intensively.
  • The diagnostic tool to send a report to the developer has been improved.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.5 Build 1385 Beta 8 (Jul 21, 2015)

  • Bug fixes:
  • When a memory leak is detected in a third party metadata importer, indexing could stop in certain circumstances.
  • The diagnostic tool to send a report to the developer has been improved.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.5 Build 1382 Beta 7 (Jul 15, 2015)

  • Bug fixes: A “can’t connect” error message could happen in some circumstances, and has been fixed.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.0.3 Build 1299 (May 6, 2015)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Miscellaneous fixes
  • Buying FoxTrot from the application itself was not working on OS X 10.10.3

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.0.2 Build 1295 (Dec 17, 2014)

  • Improvements:
  • Accelerated indexing due to a new implementation of language detection
  • We have now added each indices' name to the associated crawler and indexer process names in Activity Monitor, so as to potentially identify an offending process hanging
  • Bug fixes:
  • “Rebuild index” was ignoring files with no indexable content, instead of indexing them by filename only
  • Indexing could be very slow in some specific circumstances, such as when Little Snitch was present on OS X 10.10
  • Activity Monitor would report our processes in red as being hung (cosmetic issue) when in fact they were working perfectly
  • In Wide Screen mode, some dates could be truncated
  • Fixed reporting scripts so that they now work again on OS X 10.10
  • If the i386MDIHelper process (now known as “FoxTrot Crawler 32-bit helper”) was quit for one reason or other, it was not relaunched
  • Addressed a cosmetic crawler report when quitting

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 5.0.1 Build 1280 (Aug 27, 2014)

  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • New free FoxTrot upgrades are now installed silently (when enabled in the preferences)
  • Registering FoxTrot now applies automatically to any OS X user account on the machine
  • Plain text files larger than 10 MB are no longer indexed entirely
  • Bug fixes:
  • Modifying Finder tags for multiple documents found in multiple indexes could fail
  • When scrolling the result list, some excerpt were not displayed
  • FoxTrot's system menu did not work correctly on OS X 10.10 Yosemite when using the dark menu bar

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 4.6 Build 1165 (Sep 4, 2013)

  • iOS Support:
  • FoxTrot indices can now also be synced from FoxTrot Professional or FoxTrot Server, to FoxTrot Attaché on iOS, using web sharing. This requires you to have a web server that you can save to from FoxTrot Professional, and that will make your archived index available to FoxTrot Attaché over HTTP.
  • OS X 10.9 Mavericks support:
  • Finder tags are indexed and categorized, in addition to OpenMeta tags.
  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Google Earth .kml files are now indexed.
  • A hidden preference has been added to allow indexing a given file type using the metadata importer of another file type.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Some text documents containing very long lines with no space character could fail to display in the preview pane.
  • Some document types were not indexed when no specific metadata importer was found, although they were a variant of another document type for which a compatible importer existed.
  • Indexing .eml files (email messages exported from Microsoft Outlook or other email clients) that contained large attachments using EagleFiler's Spotlight importer would cause some performance problems (the fix requires FoxTrot 4.6 or later and EagleFiler 1.6.1 or later).

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 4.5.1 Build 1073 (Apr 4, 2013)

  • iOS support:
  • Added a presentation of FoxTrot Attaché Search, the iOS companion to FoxTrot Personal and Professional Search.
  • Bug fixes:
  • The “Reveal in Finder” button could crash.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 4.1 Build 1031 (Sep 12, 2012)

  • Bug fixes:
  • A crash could occur when toggling the preview mode of a PDF document from plain text to PDF.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 4.1 Build 1016 Beta 2 (Aug 7, 2012)

  • Note: this beta build expires on august 31, 2012.
  • OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion support - Some files or items were only indexed by name, and not by content, on OS X 10.8.
  • Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard support - FoxTrot 4.1b1 did not work correctly on Mac OS X 10.6.
  • Miscellaneous improvements - Reduced CPU usage during indexing.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 4.1 Build 1014 Beta 1 (Aug 2, 2012)

  • Expires on august 31, 2012.
  • Exact string searching:
  • You can now perform searches for exact strings, choosing to be sensible or not to the case, accents and punctuation.
  • Mountain Lion support:
  • Gatekeeper support (CTM Develoment is now an identified developer).
  • Indexing of Contacts has been fixed (Address Book).
  • The default window position could be wrong when relaunching FoxTrot.
  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Better previewing of Safari history items.
  • The Library folder (which is no longer visible in the Finder) has been added as a predefined indexable location.
  • The progress bar in the Dock is now also displayed during the first indexation.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 4.0 Build 900 (Feb 22, 2012)

  • FoxTrot 4 is a for-pay upgrade
  • Discount coupons will be sent to registered users.
  • System requirements
  • FoxTrot 4 requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later, and an Intel Mac.
  • Excerpts and preview of offline documents:
  • An excerpt containing the found words in every found document can now be shown directly in the result list, offering first-glance search result preview. The indexed text is optionally stored, and is compressed with very high efficiency.
  • A plain text version of found documents can now be displayed, when indexed files are located on an offline disk or file server. This allows the indexing off masses of documents on a MacBook and carrying around their plain text shadow, whose essential plain text contents can be viewed when disconnected. If the source hard disk or file server are mounted, the indexed document will appear instead of the plain text representation.
  • Modernized result list:
  • The result list has been modernized; it is more configurable, and can be less wide, so more space can be used to preview found documents.
  • Enhanced PDF support:
  • Added a thumbnail view for PDF files. A badge shows the number of occurrences for each searched word on each page, and thumbnails can be sorted by relevance or by page number.
  • 100 % scale now takes into account the screen resolution.
  • The “Zoom to Fit” toolbar button has been replaced by “Automatically Resize”, so the PDF document will be resized when resizing the window.
  • Lion support:
  • Supports Mac OS X 10.7’s full screen mode.
  • Progress bar in Dock icon
  • The Dock icon now displays a progress bar when the index is being built or updated.
  • Performance optimizations
  • All applications and processes are now 64-bit.
  • Third party applications
  • Added predefined indexable locations for Outlook 2011 and Evernote 3.
  • Miscellaneous improvements:
  • Most document types can now be zoomed using the pinch gesture.
  • If an index previously failed to start, attempting to start it manually by checking it in the search sources list will now propose to rebuild it.
  • In a search window with multiple criteria, typing the command-1 to command-8 keyboard shortcuts now affects the currently selected criterion.
  • Bug fixes:
  • The categorization list would sometimes show only the six most common file types (PDF, Word Processing, HTML and so on), omitting the “More…” option for displaying additional file types.
  • fixed continuous disk access when an index file can't be found, in certain circumstances.
  • fixed a crash in certain circumstances, when optimizing the index.
  • fixed a crash when the index size is larger than 4 GB.
  • fixed a performance issue in certain circumstances.
  • Fixed a rare file permission problem which prevented FoxTrot to launch its indexer.
  • Some temporary files could be left in the folder /Library/Caches/TemporaryPublicItems.
  • It was sometimes impossible to select and copy text from found mail messages.
  • A rare hang or crash on startup has been fixed.
  • Installing a new version of FoxTrot from the Software Update module could fail, if the application name has been changed in the Finder.
  • A rare crash has been fixed when closing a search window.
  • The “spotlight” preference pane could display some hidden volumes.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 3.2.1 Build 833 (Aug 10, 2011)

  • French localization - The french localization was missing from version 3.2.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 3.2 (Aug 10, 2011)

  • Improvements:
  • FoxTrot version 3.2 brings fully-qualified Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) compatibility
  • FoxTrot applications are now entirely built as 64-bit apps for enhanced performance
  • Optimized code by use of very latest developer tools (Xcode 4, LLVM, clang)
  • Third-party applications support:
  • Added support for several third-party applications (such as Evernote) whose documents were formerly indexed but listed with encoded names (note that for already indexed documents, you will need to rebuild your index)
  • Added a predefined indexing location for including Evernote documents
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a possible crash when closing a document window before all found words have been highlighted
  • Note:
  • Due to an upgrading of index formats, once you have used FoxTrot 3.2, you won't be able to revert to a previous version unless you rebuild your indices.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 3.1.2 Build 776 (Mar 3, 2011)

  • Bug fixes:
  • FoxTrot 3.1 / 3.1.1 could sometimes fail to launch if no previous version had ever been used on the machine or user account.
  • The indexer could disconnect in some cases when using multiple search criteriae if the last one was left empty.
  • First rapid compatibility validation with Lion Developer Preview; minor known issues:
  • Opening the Quick Look window may fail.
  • A message can appear from time to time when trying to use PowerPC metadata importers, as Lion does not support PowerPC.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 3.1 Build 773 (Feb 15, 2011)

  • Enhanced document preview:
  • FoxTrot now uses Quick Look’s engine to preview document types not handled internally, enhanced with FoxTrot’s usual occurrences highlighting and document-level search. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers and Keynote documents, as well as iCal events, Address Book contacts, and Mail messages.
  • HTML zooming is now a real zoom, not just a font size change.
  • Better highlighting of found words in multi-frame HTML documents.
  • User interface improvements:
  • A new search can be started in a background tab by pressing the command key.
  • Found documents can now be moved to the Finder trash; the index is updated dynamically, and the document will no longer appear under found items in subsequent searches.
  • Search results can now be sorted by the name of the containing folder.
  • Moved index management-related functionality from the File menu to a new Indexing menu.
  • Optimized concurrent updating of indices (using the Indexing menu)
  • Instead of running all processes simultaneously, FoxTrot now matches the number of indices updated concurrently to the number of CPU cores installed to maximize throughput.
  • Partial index updating:
  • Added the ability to focus an index update on a given folder’s contents instead of a full update. This applies to all running indices containing the given folder. This can be invoked from the Indexing menu, or by dragging an already-indexed folder to the application icon.
  • Stopping index updates:
  • Added the ability to stop all indexing; this is useful if you have too much going on at a time when you need the CPU’s full attention for something else. Indexing will stop after processing the current document for each indexer, so if these are large the stop may take a few seconds.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Mailtags was always disabled by default, hence if Mailtags was installed, this would preclude all Apple mail messages from being indexed. If you have MailTags installed, you will hence need to rebuild your index once.
  • Less network traffic when FoxTrot Pro is hidden, or in the background.
  • Predefined locations could have a generic icon.
  • FoxTrot can now be used in multiple Mac OS user accounts simultaneously (using fast user switching).
  • FoxTrot now displays an appropriate error message when trying to use simultaneously multiple versions of the application in the same Mac OS user account.
  • Enhanced AppleScript support:
  • update all Update all running indices.
  • update folder Update the given file or folder (if its contents is indexed in running indices).

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 3.0.2 Build 732 (Nov 14, 2010)

  • User interface improvements:
  • Now remembers the display order of the categories, and which categories were collapsed, from the last search.
  • Now remembers the search operator (all words, any word…) from the last search.
  • Control-click will now display contextual menus, unless you have explicitly assigned the control key to something else in the preference pane.
  • Software update:
  • FoxTrot now uses the Sparkle engine for software updates.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Under certain circumstances, the application could use some CPU resources on idle, when a search result window is visible.
  • A crash could occur on Mac OS X 10.5 when customizing the toolbar.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 3.0.1 Build 718 (Oct 20, 2010)

  • Fixes:
  • The indexer could crash under very specific circumstances
  • Printing a text or word processor document from the main window's preview did not work
  • smaller margins when printing HTML
  • when rebuilding an index, reselect it in the sources
  • expiration date removed
  • fixed the french localization

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 3.0 Build 713 (Sep 29, 2010)

  • Please note:
  • Once an index has been opened with FoxTrot Professional or Personal version 3, it is no longer usable with version 2.x and would have to be re-constructed in version 2.
  • This build can be evaluated for 30 days since first installation, unless you have entered your registration information valid for version 3.
  • Features:
  • New user interface:
  • the main window now uses split views instead of drawers, for the preview, search indices, and categories.
  • wide screen or compact layouts are available
  • multiple searches in a single window using tabs
  • the index status window is now part of the main window
  • zoom buttons for the preview in the main window's toolbar
  • added tooltip in the date categorization histogram
  • preview documents using the QuickLook thumbnail for file types that FoxTrot does not handle natively, when no textual content is available
  • multiple opened documents in a single window using tabs
  • added a series of predefined locations to the Indexed data pane, to quickly select:
  • folders in a home folder
  • Documents
  • Desktop
  • Downloads
  • Music
  • Pictures
  • Movies
  • Public
  • Sites
  • Apple Mail Messages including IMAP attachments and saved/viewed POP attachments
  • iCal events and attachments
  • Address Book contacts
  • Safari bookmarks and history
  • System and application logs
  • Filenames only, for the boot volume
  • PowerMail messages and attachments
  • Transmit favorites
  • Enhanced categorization:
  • new categories:
  • by main language
  • by Finder label
  • by user tag (OpenMeta)
  • by author
  • categories are now sorted by relevance, and only the most relevant ones are displayed by default
  • Indexing improvements:
  • Increased flexibility: one can now define the file types to be indexed by content or file name only for each indexed folder
  • User tags (OpenMeta) are now indexed, and can be searched specifically
  • FoxTrot now indexes all the metadata returned by the Spotlight metadata importers, instead of a just a subset
  • Folders marked to be ignored by Spotlight (with a ".noindex" name suffix") are no longer indexed, as well as folders containing a hidden file named ".noindex")
  • hidden files and folders, and contents of application packages are no longer indexed by default
  • the "Indexed files" field in the configuration pane now more reliably indicates the number of files in the index
  • Fixes:
  • FoxTrot now suggests to the user to not run it from the installation disk image. In case the user persists, FoxTrot makes sure to quit background processing on exit, so the disk image can be ejected properly.
  • Fixed a minor memory leak that could be notified in the console ("autoreleased with no pool in place")
  • Several crashes fixed, including one occurring when the application was being quit by Mac OS
  • Fixed long-standing incompatibility with Unsanity's Application Enhancer
  • Fixed long-standing compatibility issue with MailTags
  • Other changes:
  • Had to drop support for PowerPC or Mac OS X 10.4. For users of either platform, we will continue to support them in version 2.6

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 3.0 Beta 3 Build 708 (Sep 2, 2010)

  • New user interface:
  • the main window now uses split views instead of drawers, for the preview, search indices, and categories.
  • wide screen or compact layouts are available
  • multiple searches in a single window using tabs
  • the index status window is now part of the main window
  • zoom buttons for the preview in the main window's toolbar
  • added tooltip in the date categorization histogram
  • preview documents using the QuickLook thumbnail for file types that FoxTrot does not handle natively, when no textual content is available
  • multiple opened documents in a single window using tabs
  • added a series of predefined locations to the Indexed data pane, to quickly select:
  • folders in a home folder
  • Documents
  • Desktop
  • Downloads
  • Music
  • Pictures
  • Movies
  • Public
  • Sites
  • Apple Mail Messages including IMAP attachments and saved/viewed POP attachments
  • iCal events and attachments
  • Address Book contacts
  • Safari bookmarks and history
  • System and application logs
  • Filenames only, for the boot volume
  • PowerMail messages and attachments
  • Transmit favorites
  • Enhanced categorization:
  • new categories:
  • by main language
  • by Finder label
  • by user tag (OpenMeta)
  • by author
  • categories are now sorted by relevance, and only the most relevant ones are displayed by default
  • Indexing improvements:
  • Increased flexibility: one can now define the file types to be indexed by content or file name only for each indexed folder
  • User tags (OpenMeta) are now indexed, and can be searched specifically
  • FoxTrot now indexes all the metadata returned by the Spotlight metadata importers, instead of a just a subset
  • Folders marked to be ignored by Spotlight (with a ".noindex" name suffix") are no longer indexed, as well as folders containing a hidden file named ".noindex")
  • hidden files and folders, and contents of application packages are no longer indexed by default
  • the "Indexed files" field in the configuration pane now more reliably indicates the number of files in the index
  • Fixes:
  • FoxTrot now suggests to the user to not run it from the installation disk image. In case the user persists, FoxTrot makes sure to quit background processing on exit, so the disk image can be ejected properly.
  • Fixed a minor memory leak that could be notified in the console ("autoreleased with no pool in place")
  • Several crashes fixed, including one occurring when the application was being quit by Mac OS
  • Other changes:
  • Had to drop support for PowerPC or Mac OS X 10.4. For users of either platform, we will continue to support them in version 2.6

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 2.6 Beta 1 Build 634 (Mar 17, 2010)

  • Features
  • 64-bit performance: FoxTrot's background agents (data extraction, indexing, process monitor) are now 64-bit processes on Snow Leopard, resulting in increased performance, notably when used in conjunction with 64-bit metadata importers such as the one contained in PowerMail 6.0.4.
  • FoxTrot System Menu: On Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, a new System menu is available at all times, whether or not the FoxTrot application is launched. By holding the option key upon selecting the menu, an additional menu item appears to quit the System menu; this is required before updating the application. The system menu is fully configurable in its own preference pane.
  • Basic AppleScript support: The FoxTrot application now supports control from external applications via AppleScript for two of the most fundamental actions: submit a search string to the application for searching and request the application to update the index. Also see the dictionary.
  • Increased Client-Server Security:
  • Implemented SSL transport transport security with either self-signed or trusted certificates.
  • Encrypted password storage
  • Login now occurs via a challenge-and-response mechanism, in such a way that it is not possible to log in with a possible capture of a previous successful login
  • Only password hashes are carried across the network, not passwords itself
  • Index Disk Images: Disk images are now on an equal footing to folders when explicitly added for indexing. Additionally, when such an image is needed but not mounted, FoxTrot will attempt to mount it and, unless the password is stored in a keychain accessible to the application, Mac OS will prompt for passwords in the case of encrypted disk images.
  • Indexing of Finder Comments: The Finder comments are now indexed by FoxTrot even when using Xpdf or Antiword (option-command on launch, then "Manage metadata importers") to read files instead of using Spotlight importers.
  • Index FileServer & TimeCapsule volumes File servers, including TimeCapsule volumes in their file server capacity. are now on an equal footing to folders when explicitly added for indexing. To do this, create an alias to the required volume and drag it into the list of items to be indexed. Additionally, when such an server is needed but not mounted, FoxTrot will attempt to mount it and, if necessary, Mac OS will prompt for passwords.
  • Index FileServer & TimeCapsule AFPLoc documents Another way to have file servers (AFP and SMB), including TimeCapsule volumes in their file server capacity. added for indexing is to drag a server location file as created by an appropriate URL dragged into the Finder; these are now on an equal footing to folders when explicitly added for indexing. Additionally, when such an server is needed but not mounted, FoxTrot will attempt to mount it and, if necessary, Mac OS will prompt for passwords.
  • Hourly / 4-hourly index updates: In addition to the previous fixed-time daily updates, added a mechanism to schedule the updating of an index at fixed time intervals - this time is computed between the end on an index update and the beginning of the next update.
  • Accelerated Index Update Speed: Considerable optimizations have been implemented (found greater than 220% in testing) when updating large index files.
  • Other improvements
  • Accelerated Index Update Speed: Considerable optimizations have been implemented (found greater than 220% in testing) when updating large index files.
  • Upon double-clicking on a folder, the action request is now passed on to the Finder instead of trying to open it in a FoxTrot window.
  • When managing metadata importers (option-command on launching the application) we now display the name of the application for which there is a metadata importer when it is contained in one instead of the plugin name, which should be more explicit; also added a tooltip with the full path at which it can be found
  • When waking-up from sleep, connected FoxTrot servers or other FoxTrot Professional applications are no longer disconnected
  • This version offers a new 30-day evaluation window for folks who had previously tried and expired a FoxTrot application
  • Improved handling of low-disk-space conditions when indexing indices
  • Bug fixes
  • FoxTrot Professional could hang on quit
  • Fixed an occurrence of the "Can't connect to the indexer" message shown.
  • Fixed a situation which could reset the list of folders to be indexed in a near-disk-full situation
  • No longer hilite the "does not include exact phrase" and "search in filename" in text previews

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 2.5.3 Build 604 (Jan 16, 2010)

  • Features:
  • Implemented keychain support in both FoxTrot Professional when acting as client and FoxTrot Admin; hence passwords can now be remember from one connection to another and are stored in the system's keychain.
  • Now includes german-language localization
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixes the occasional remaining "Can't connect to indexer" messages that remained in 2.5.2
  • When updating an index, if a folder (or more typically, a volume - shared folder, external drive, or disk image) specified in the "indexed data" pane is not found (typically, because the volume is not mounted), its previous content is no longer considered as having been deleted.
  • In some rare circumstances, an index could fail to be shared (registration problem)
  • Crash fixed in the bookmarks window
  • Text searched only in the filename or metadata (and text searched using the "does not include the exact phrase" operator) is no longer highlighted in the document preview or in the document window.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the index settings to be lost when the disk is full
  • When starting an index, its status was not updated until you deselected and reselected it
  • A crash could sometime occur in RosettaMDIHelper, when using a PowerPC Spotlight metadata importer on an Intel Mac.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 2.5.1 Build 587 (Oct 31, 2009)

  • Fixed a literal string search bug introduced in 2.5

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 2.5 Build 585 (Oct 28, 2009)

  • Features:
  • Introduces the ability and user interface to share an index across a network and associate it with a file share mechanism or file server process, either co-located on the same machine or using a different network store
  • Implemented Snow Leopard compatibility, notably when previewing a file using Quick Look
  • Some Spotlight metadata importers bundled with Snow Leopard were not supported, for example for HTML files
  • Implemented a new Date range categorizer which enable visual and numerical definition of a date interval for a document, along with a histogram showing frequency of hits in a given period
  • Added Bonjour support for discovery of FoxTrot Search servers as well as peer-to-peer discovery of other FoxTrot Professional Search copies with multi-user licences and shared indices
  • Implemented performance optimizations since version 2.0.4
  • When FoxTrot Professional is connected to a remote FoxTrot Search Server or another FoxTrot Professional, stopped indices no longer appear in the search source list
  • When clicking a stopped local index (displayed in gray) in the search source list, FoxTrot Professional now offers to start it
  • Other improvements:
  • Closing a document window could crash in certain circumstances
  • Updated to build with Snow Leopard-compatible development tools
  • When connecting to a remote FoxTrot Professional or Search server sharing multiple indices using different passwords, there no longer is an error message displayed for the indices using a different password.
  • The search source list could sometimes collapse, or some search sources could be unchecked, when connecting to a new server
  • Checking a server in the search source list now updates the list of indices shared by this server
  • The "couldn't strip" warning on Leopard has been fixed
  • The ibtool error when using the Styled Text Field on Leopard has been fixed
  • Corrected an OmniOutliner importer compatibility issue
  • Fixed "index is stopped; start it?" followed by crash when deleting an index
  • We no longer display January 1, 1904 as the creation dates for text preview or short pane of un-locateable documents
  • [Cosmetic] Changed label alignments in settings panes

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 2.5 Beta 7 Build 570 (Oct 13, 2009)

  • When FoxTrot Professional is connected to a remote FoxTrot Search Server or another FoxTrot Professional, stopped indices no longer appear in the search source list.
  • When clicking a stopped local index (displayed in gray) in the search source list, FoxTrot Professional now proposes to start it.
  • When connecting to a remote FoxTrot Pro sharing multiple indices using different passwords, there is no longer an error message displayed for the indices using a different password.
  • Added a french-language localization.
  • The search source list could sometimes collapse, or some search sources could be unchecked, when connecting to a new server.
  • Checking a server in the search source list now updates the list of indices shared by this server.
  • The "couldn't strip" warning on Leopard has been fixed.
  • The ibtool error when using the Styled Text Field on Leopard has been fixed.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 2.0.4 Build 475.2 (May 18, 2009)

  • Improved support for indexing Microsoft Office Word 2008 documents: in earlier FoxTrot versions, these could show under their metadata's document name, which often is not defined by users; these now display in result lists by file name.
  • Microsoft Office Word 2008 documents now appear under the Word Processing documents category instead of "Other".
  • Created a new category named "Documents" which drastically reduces the number of files categorized under "Other" (notably includes documents created by several Omni application, iWeb and more).

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 2.0.3 Build 475 (Dec 8, 2008)

  • Features:
  • Implemented a Runtime Revolution API to allow developers client-side access to FoxTrot Professional, enabling custom solutions built with Runtime Revolution to perfom searches in indexed documents and display their own results. The SDK containing this API will require a licensed copy of FoxTrot Professional Search for development purposes and a reasonably-priced licence for application deployment. Contact [email protected] for access to the SDK and licensing terms.
  • Increased launch speed: when multiple indices are configured, you can now start searching on the first one without waiting that the other indices are fully launched
  • When launching FoxTrot Pro or opening a new search window, the previously selected indices are now selected by default.
  • It is now possible to add an existing index file (for example, an index file created from another machine on a CD, USB key or other external volume) to the list of indices by opening it from the Finder. (An index can be also be added from the "Manage Indices" window, specifying the name and location of the existing index file).
  • Upon option-clicking a found file to display its textual contents as it was indexed, its metadata is now also displayed.
  • Log files are now stored inside the index package instead of the log folder. A button has been added in the "manage indices" window to display them.
  • Other improvements:
  • [2.0.3 build 475] when the sytem-level Spotlight HTML importer fails to extract data from an HTML document, FoxTrot no longer tries to extract it using NSAttributedString (a method which turned out to be very, very slow)
  • [2.0.3 build 475] In the "Manage Indices" window, added the ability to rebuild an index by pressing the command and option keys when clicking the "Start" button
  • [2.0.3 build 475] Fixed a crash when some UTI's have an infinite loop in the "conform to" chain (technical)
  • [2.0.3 build 475] The indexer could fail to start, after having migrated a FoxTrot installation from Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.5.
  • [2.0.2 build 473] When FoxTrot was set to Open at Login, fixed a situation in which auto-launching of indexers would fail
  • [2.0.2] Fixed a case in which updating an index would take an inordinate amount of time (was close to a partial rebuild)
  • Output generated by some third party metadata importers is no longer sent to the system console.
  • If the FoxTrot Pro application had been moved or renamed, scheduled updates could fail when the application was not running
  • If an index fails to start, an error dialog now indicates the exact cause
  • FoxTrot Pro could have the impression that it lost its indices on relaunch (and hence show the first-time assistant) needlessly; this has been fixed.
  • Known cosmetic detail:
  • Activity Monitor has a tendency to show some of FoxTrot's processes as "not responding" on Mac OS X 10.5.x. This is cosmetic only and beyond our implementation control - the processes are indeed functioning, kindly ignore that mention.

New in FoxTrot Professional Search 2.0.2 Build 472 (Jul 30, 2008)

  • Increased launch speed: when multiple indices are configured, you can now start searching on the first one without waiting that the other indices are fully launched
  • When launching FoxTrot Pro or opening a new search window, the previously selected indices are now selected by default.
  • It is now possible to add an existing index file (for example, an index file created from another machine on a CD, USB key or other external volume) to the list of indices by opening it from the Finder. (An index can be also be added from the "manage indices" window, specifying the name and location of the existing index file).
  • Upon option-clicking a found file to display its textual contents as it was indexed, its metadata is now also displayed.
  • Log files are now stored inside the index package instead of the log folder. A button has been added in the "manage indices" window to display them.
  • [2.0.2] Fixed a case in which updating an index would take an inordinate amount of time (was close to a partial rebuild)
  • Output generated by some third party metadata importers is no longer sent to the system console.
  • If the FoxTrot Pro application had been moved or renamed, scheduled updates could fail when the application was not running
  • If an index fails to start, an error dialog now indicates the exact cause
  • FoxTrot Pro could have the impression that it lost its indices on relaunch (and hence show the first-time assistant) needlessly; this has been fixed.
  • Activity Monitor has a tendency to show some of FoxTrot's processes as "not responding" on Mac OS X 10.5.x. This is cosmetic only and beyond our implementation control - the processes are indeed functioning, kindly ignore that mention.