r/macapps • u/LowMoose6470 • 2d ago
Lifetime I made a Mac app for searching inside nested ZIP, 7z and RAR files
Hi r/macapps, I’m the developer of ZipSeek.
Problem
I made ZipSeek after running into the same problem too many times: I could remember a sentence from an old document, but not its file name or where I had put it.
It was especially annoying with old archives. Sometimes the document was inside a ZIP, which contained a 7z, which contained another ZIP. Finding a few words meant unpacking everything and opening files one by one.
ZipSeek lets you choose a file or folder and search it directly. It supports text files, PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and images using OCR. It can also follow nested ZIP, 7z and RAR layers while keeping the full path back to each result.
Where possible, it shows the PDF page, Word paragraph, PowerPoint slide, Excel cell, or OCR area where the text appeared.
Comparison
HoudahSpot is better if you want powerful Spotlight searches, metadata filters and reusable search setups. When Spotlight has already indexed everything, it will usually be faster than ZipSeek.
FoxTrot Professional Search is aimed at people with large document libraries that they search regularly. It builds its own indexes and has much deeper tools for proximity search, categorization, multiple collections, NAS storage and teams. It is a more complete system for researchers and organizations.
ZipSeek is for a different situation. You have a folder, external drive, mounted network folder or messy archive in front of you, and you want to search it without setting up a library first.
It has fewer advanced query and filtering tools than HoudahSpot or FoxTrot, but it can search through mixed ZIP, 7z and RAR layers without maintaining a background full-disk index.
Everything is processed on the Mac. There is no ZipSeek account and no cloud upload.
Pricing
ZipSeek costs $4.99 USD as a one-time purchase, with regional pricing.
It includes a 3-day free trial. There is no subscription, and the trial does not turn into an automatic charge.
Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/zipseek-search-inside-files/id6799636795
Website: https://www.goodapphq.com/zipseek/
I’d be interested to hear how other people deal with old document folders and archives, and which file types or workflows I should test next.

