Kempt
In short
Spotlight searches file names and indexed text, so it works when you remember a word that’s in the file. When you remember what the document is but not its words (“my lease”, “the rent amount”), Kempt’s Ask (⌃⌥Space) searches by meaning and answers with the source page cited, in about 10 ms over 1,575 documents.
Without any app
Narrow Spotlight
Press ⌘Space and add a kind: “lease kind:pdf”. In Finder search, add “Contents” and “Kind” criteria.
Make scans searchable
Text inside image-only PDFs is often not indexed. Open them in Preview and copy text with Live Text, or re-scan with text recognition.
Save a Smart Folder
In Finder, run a search, then File › Save to keep it as a Smart Folder that updates itself.
With Kempt
Ask in plain words
Press ⌃⌥Space and type or say “where’s my lease?” or “what’s my IBAN?”. You get the document and the answer.
Every answer cites its page
A figure only appears in an answer if it is on the cited page. Right file first 12 times out of 13 in Kempt’s scored test set.
Voice notes and videos too
Speech in voice notes and videos is transcribed on your Mac, so you can find what was said.
Questions people ask
Why can’t Spotlight find my PDF?
Usually because the PDF is a scan with no text layer, or the words you type aren’t the words in the file. Kempt reads scans with OCR and searches by meaning.
Can I ask my Mac questions about my documents?
With Kempt, yes: it answers from your documents on your Mac and cites the page the answer came from.
Does searching send my documents online?
Not with Kempt. Indexing, search and answers all run on your Mac.