📁 Folder Search

ComfyUI can generate images until the cows come home, but point it at a folder full of existing files and it shrugs. FolderSearch (📁 Folder Search, from ControlFlowUtils) is the missing piece: it scans a directory, matches files against a pattern, and hands them to your workflow - either all at once, or one file per execution so a loop can chew through a folder like a queue.

This is the node that turns "process every PNG in this folder" from a manual chore into a pipeline. Combined with this pack's Loop nodes, you get a real batch processor: search the folder, load each file, process, save, next.

The inputs that matter

• folder_path - directory to scan. Absolute, or relative to ComfyUI's root.
• search_mask - the glob-style pattern. * matches anything, ? a single character, # a single digit, [a-z] a range, [!abc] excludes. Default *.*. Want only PNGs? *.png.
• output_type - the big decision:
  • Full file list - returns every match as a list in one shot.
  • Current file (default) - returns one file per execution, advancing through the list until exhausted, then returns an empty string and resets. This is the mode that makes folder-processing loops work.
• recursive - on by default: scan subfolders too.
• include_directories - off by default; folders won't appear in results unless enabled.
• return_full_path - return full paths, or just filenames.
• relative_filenames - with full paths off, include the parent folder relative to the search directory.
• save_output_to (optional) - write the found-file list to a log file for later processing.

The single output is either the full list or the current file depending on output_type.

How people use it

The one-file-at-a-time mode is the star. Feed it into a loop: each iteration loads the next file, does your processing, saves the result, and closes the loop - FolderSearch hands you the following file on the next lap. That's a folder batch job with maybe four nodes. Full-list mode is for when you want to pass the whole set somewhere at once, like a "list these files in the UI" utility.

Watch the mask syntax if something returns nothing. *.* on Linux/macOS matches files with a dot; for extension-only matching on every OS, patterns like *.png are the safe bet. And remember return_full_path defaults to off - downstream loaders often want the full path, so if files aren't loading, that toggle is the first thing to check. When output_type is "current file" and the list is exhausted, you get an empty string - make sure whatever consumes it can handle that (that's the loop's end-of-input signal).

Install

FolderSearch ships in VykosX/ControlFlowUtils:

# ComfyUI Manager → Install Custom Nodes → search "ControlFlowUtils"
# or manually:
cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/VykosX/ControlFlowUtils

Restart, find it under 🐺 VykosX-ControlFlowUtils, and pair it with a Loop Open/Close pair for your first folder-batch workflow. No dependencies, no model files - it's pure filesystem logic.