Saw this mentioned in a comment recently, I just downloaded, installed and used it to find a file while Windows Search was still saying 'Working on it...'. So I thought others might like to know.
Everything is amazing. Even better if you set a shortcut key (I use ctrl+shift+/) and it's just so fast. You can even query (I just recently learned this) like:
Best thing about windows and biggest thing I miss. Have never been able to find equivalent for Mac — stuff that comes close but really not quite the magic of Everything. Same w Total Commander. Sad!
I'm running the 1.5 Alpha for many of the reasons listed on its page: https://www.voidtools.com/everything-1.5a/ (especially Dark Mode and support for Properties/Tags/xattr/ADS/XMP)
This tool has completely changed the way I work with files - I no longer need to remember where they are, just a part of the name. Coincidentally, this means my files are better organized, since I know I can always just jump straight there instead of having to think about the folder structure.
I use it so often that I put it in the search bar, so that I can open it with Win + 1.
This is one of the first things I install on a new Win OS install. Combined with good tagging in file names it makes finding things so fast. It is absurd Windows doesn't have this built in since it is a simple index that leverages NTFS file table.
If you select Search > Advanced from the menu, you get a window where you can enter the content to search for. This is available in the normal as well as the alpha version.
I used this for a while. What I don't like is that it updates its database by creating an entirely new copy and then deleting/renaming. For me that meant a several-hundred-MB file was being unnecessarily rewritten on a regular basis. It's a rather excessive waste of resources and not a polite thing to do when a lot of people have SSDs now.
I used this a lot when I was doing Windows stuff professionally, and I always really liked it.
The command line interface is good too: supply file spec that you'd type in to the GUI, and it'll print a list of matching files to stdout, one per line. Very easy to work with. I cobbled together a bit of Python stuff so that any time I was putting together a tool that needed to search for files, it could find the Everything command line tool if present, and use that instead of os.walk and the like, for a useful speedup.
(If nothing else, "es PATTERN" (to instantly find any name matching PATTERN anywhere on the system) is less typing than "find FOLDER -iname 'PATTERN'", and finishes more quickly. And compared to using locate, there's less chance of the database being out of date.)
This tool is incredible for its simplicity. I was looking for old files I thought I deleted from flash drive and it was able to detect them instantly on my PC vs. native explorer.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 55.5 ms ] threadPreviously on HN a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41337268 and probably other times
Thank you, whoever you were!
*.txt size:>1024kb
IIRC it loads the FS index into memory and queries directly off of it. If a simple metadata search is enough for you I don’t think you can do better
e: also available in WinGet as `voidtools.Everything.Alpha` https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/tree/master/manifes...
It's a shame Microsoft can't figure their shit out and get a high quality native search figured out.
I use it so often that I put it in the search bar, so that I can open it with Win + 1.
* As another comment says, v1.5 alpha has many advantages. Despite the alpha label, I find it to be very stable.
* Several software integrations exist: https://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6326, I mostly like being able to see folder sizes instantly in explorer. I used xplorer2 in the past, which has a plugin, but I went back to native explorer, which has a Windhawk mod, feels like what Microsoft should have done: https://windhawk.net/mods/explorer-details-better-file-sizes
The real question is: why is the default Windows search so terrible? Did Microsoft make it useless on purpose?
It is a HUGE memory hog so buyer beware
I uninstalled it for that reason.
I work on win11. I don't use native search because it sucks and is slow as tar drip experiment.
Onedrive/sharepoint files content search at least works at all but only in web version. Still slow as hell, unreliable, ui/ux is crap.
With Everything I search >500k real files/folders + >300k fake files in milliseconds.
The command line interface is good too: supply file spec that you'd type in to the GUI, and it'll print a list of matching files to stdout, one per line. Very easy to work with. I cobbled together a bit of Python stuff so that any time I was putting together a tool that needed to search for files, it could find the Everything command line tool if present, and use that instead of os.walk and the like, for a useful speedup.
(If nothing else, "es PATTERN" (to instantly find any name matching PATTERN anywhere on the system) is less typing than "find FOLDER -iname 'PATTERN'", and finishes more quickly. And compared to using locate, there's less chance of the database being out of date.)