Install

What you need

An Apple silicon Mac

Any M-series Mac. The on-device models run on its GPU. Intel Macs are not supported.

macOS 12 or later

Adding a Google Drive folder needs macOS 12.1 or later.

About 8 GB of disk

That covers the models. The search index takes more on top, depending on how much you point SearchAF at.

An internet connection, once

For the model download and for update checks. Searching never uses the network.

First run

1. Open the DMG and drag SearchAF into Applications. The app is signed and notarized, so macOS opens it without any workarounds.
2. SearchAF asks to download its models. Say yes. They come from Hugging Face and land in ~/.antfly/inference/models. You can start searching as soon as the indexing models arrive, while the larger answer model finishes in the background. If you decline, SearchAF works as a keyword search until you turn the models on in Settings.
3. Choose the folders you want searchable. These can be local folders or a Google Drive folder. macOS will ask before SearchAF reads Desktop, Documents, or Downloads, and a few locations need Full Disk Access. When that happens, SearchAF tells you and gives you a button straight to the right pane in System Settings.
4. SearchAF sets up a small background service so indexing keeps going when the window is closed. It runs as your user, only on your Mac, and it goes away when you uninstall.
5. Press ⌘ ⇧ Space from anywhere to open SearchAF. You can change the shortcut in Settings.

Indexing runs hard for a while after you add folders, then settles down. Until the semantic index catches up, searches match on file names and keywords, so early results will get better over the first hour or so.

Updates

SearchAF checks for a new version every six hours and only installs one when you say so. If you want new features early, Settings lets you switch to the beta or nightly channel.

Uninstall

First, open Settings and use Delete all indexed data in the Danger zone. Tick the box to delete the downloaded models as well. Then, in Terminal, stop the background service and remove what is left:

launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.antflydb.searchaf.backend.plist
rm -f ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.antflydb.searchaf.backend.plist
rm -rf ~/.searchaf
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/SearchAF
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/io.antfly.searchaf

Finally, drag SearchAF.app to the Trash. The models in ~/.antfly/inference/models are shared with other Antfly tools, so delete that directory only if nothing else on your Mac uses them.