Desktop search is a software application which searches the contents of computer files, rather than searching the internet. The purpose of this software is to enable the user to locate information on their computer that they just cannot seem to find. Typically, this data includes emails, chat logs, documents, contact lists, graphics files, as well as multimedia files including video and audio.
Searching a hard disk can be slow, especially bearing in mind the large storage capacities of modern hard disks. To ensure considerably better performance, desktop search engines build and maintain an index database. Populating this database is a system intensive activity. Consequently, desktop search engines can carry out indexing when the computer is not being used.
One of the key benefits of this type of software is that it allows the user to locate data stored on their hard disk almost instantaneously. They are designed to be fast. They are not integrated with a different application, such as a file manager.
Here’s our recommended free and open source Windows software to help you search the filesystem.
| Filesystem Search Tools | |
| fzf | Command-line fuzzy finder offering a good range of features |
| ripgrep | Line-oriented tool that recursively searches your current directory for a regex pattern |
| peco | CLI utility that filters text interactively. The tool is written in Go |
While Everything is not released under an open source license (it’s freeware though), it merits a special mention as it’s a truly awesome utility.
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