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ThisBougieLife

Suspended
Original poster
Jan 21, 2016
3,259
10,666
Northern California
Sorry I know this is messy, but this is something that's bothered me about macOS for a long time. Essentially the issue is this:

I have a lot of files in my Pictures folder. Many of them are given simple titles with numbers like "vacation1" or "flower34" but the problem is, when saving a new one, I never remember which number I'm on. So I might try "flower32" and then it will ask me if I want to replace an existing file, then I try flower33, same thing, until I get to the right number. On Windows (and I hate Windows for tons of reasons, but this is one thing it has over macOS) if you type in "flower" in the Save dialog it will show you all the files with that name and let you know that "flower34" is the most recent one so I know immediately to call the new file "flower35" instead of having to test several names.

Even disregarding these files with numbers (I know I could have a better system), let's just say I want to save a new textedit document. It immediately suggests the name "untitled", but of course there already is a file called "untitled", so when I click save it asks me if I want to replace the file name. So I've taken to just calling things Untitled2387193483 (or whatever) so I know it won't be a duplicate name. I have a lot of textedit files related to ideas for my writing, so I want them to all have related names, but I often end up typing in a name I've already used and it's frustrating. There has to be a better way, right?

I noticed on the macOS save dialog, there is a search bar, but it only searches for folders, not filenames. Even though it actually shows "Filenames" when I type in something, but it won't find anything. Just folder names. Is there a way to search for filenames in the Save dialog search bar?
 
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