Ask HN: Best Windows file search tool?
Windows search sucks. There used to be Google Desktop which found any file instantly, similarly to gmail search.
What are the best indexing tools today? and file managers in general, like explorer alternatives.
What are the best indexing tools today? and file managers in general, like explorer alternatives.
Fast indexing, instant search, does regex and other advanced searches.
For file managers, maybe Total Commander or One Commander.
I've mapped Win+Alt+Space to activate Everything (Settings > Keyboard), then set "Clear Window on Execute" (Settings > General) to on.
Now a simple keypress gets me search, I can quickly navigate using cursor keys and on selection it closes the search window.
If I'm looking for something fancier I can use the keyboard shortcut, then Ctrl+R to enable Regex search and so on.
Fast and simple.
And that was on hardware which was orders of magnitude slower, both processor and HDD.
People probably haven't benchmarked this on 21st century hardware in a while.
It can be amazing what a single 2GHz core can do when you give it a chance.
Double Commander is the best FOSS file manager on Windows (TC clone) and other OSes.
You can install/update all via chocolatey: cinst everything doublecmd