Locate

helm-locate (<helm-prefix> l by default) is Helm’s interface to the locate command, which finds files on your system that have been indexed with updatedb.

Configuration

The exact command for helm-locate can be customized through the variable helm-locate-command. The default value works on most locate versions and variants.

On more recent versions of locate, you may want to use multi-matching with the --regex option, which is not available in older versions:

(setq helm-locate-command "locate %s -e -A --regex %s")

Usage

Execute the helm-locate command, then enter a filename or pattern at the prompt. Some options are below:

Option	Description
-b	Only use the base name (no directories)
-e	Only include files that actually exist
-n	Limit number of search results

Example pattern:

emacs -b -e -n 12

From helm-find-files

In helm-find-files, hit C-x C-f. With a prefix argument, you can choose a locatedb file.

Launch grep

When the search is done, you can search in a specific file or directory with the grep action in the action menu (TAB). You can also launch Helm grep with (C-u) M-g s without switching to the action panel.

Local locatedb database

You can specify a locate database with prefix argument ARG (C-u). Many databases can be used: navigate to and mark them. See helm-locate-with-db.

To create a user specific db, use:

updatedb -l 0 -o dbpath -U directory

where dbpath is a filename matched by helm-locate-db-file-regexp.

Other platforms

Windows

On Windows, you should use the Everything, which works like locate. It is very fast and does not require manual database updates.

To use Everything with helm-locate, you will need the command line tool named es. Be sure to modify the PATH environment variable to include path to the directory that contain es. Also unset helm-locate-fuzzy-match, or Everything will give no results.

OS X

To use mdfind, disable helm-locate-fuzzy-match. If it is set to `t` and mdfind is used, helm-locate won’t show any results.