[HN Gopher] "Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows
___________________________________________________________________
"Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows
Author : Bluestein
Score : 103 points
Date : 2024-08-24 11:07 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.voidtools.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.voidtools.com)
| vilhelmen wrote:
| I've been using it for what must be over ten years and I cannot
| recommend it enough, especially given how poor searching for
| anything on Windows is now.
| anjel wrote:
| Genius UI and more than a file search. I often use it as a
| minimalist file manager.
| xnx wrote:
| I love Everything, but it might be sad commentary on the state
| of "modern" web and desktop UIs that a bog-standard file list
| now counts as "genius".
| wlawson wrote:
| Great program. Highly recommend it.
| beart wrote:
| Search in Windows is THE indicator of how poorly Microsoft has
| maintained their core operating system, IMO.
|
| What could be more significant over the last 20 years than
| "search", and where does there exist a worst implementation of it
| in a major piece of software?
|
| Everything really puts a spotlight on this with how simple and
| effective it is.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >Search in Windows is THE indicator of how poorly Microsoft has
| maintained their core operating system, IMO.
|
| Upvoted.
|
| Bing(o)!
| rl3 wrote:
| Windows Explorer can't even sort files in a timely fashion most
| of the time. It's pathetic.
| sickblastoise wrote:
| I seriously don't understand how searching for a file in
| windows takes so long and yields such crappy results? What
| abomination must there be under the hood for it to be this
| consistently bad for all of these years? Microsoft devs chime
| in if you have any insight.
| beefnugs wrote:
| Somehow i don't even think it is enshittification, because
| their search has been bad forever. On all previous versions
| of windows server even.
|
| ok ok, maybe it would slow things down to index shared
| drives? well how do you fuck up simple search on the LOCAL
| computer too???? I have to use powershell to do searching
| "gci -recurse" is built in alias for get-childitem. And it
| wasn't too many more lines of code to start searching the
| contents of word and excel files. (although this does take a
| lot longer, at least it works)
| HaZeust wrote:
| WinXP Search was pretty good.
| danbruc wrote:
| I agree that searching on Windows sucks but I guess there is a
| trade-off to be made. You can use very abstract APIs that will
| work for all kinds of file systems, whether a local disks, a
| DVD, a USB connected phone, or a network drive, but it will be
| slow and limited because you can only rely on the lowest common
| denominator. On the other end of the spectrum you can build
| highly specialized functionality that can be fast and take
| advantage of all the features of the target file system, maybe
| even accessing the medium at the block level, but it will only
| work for a specific target. So I can at least see how you can
| end up with what we have.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > On the other end of the spectrum you can build highly
| specialized functionality that can be fast and take advantage
| of all the features of the target file system, maybe even
| accessing the medium at the block level [...]
|
| This is how WizTree works and why it's _significantly_ faster
| than WinDirStat.
|
| WinDirStat uses the system APIs to crawl the file system tree
| which results in lots of random reads and drive cache
| thrashing. WizTree directly reads and parses the file system
| data, making it an order of magnitude (Even 2+ orders of
| magnitude on magnetic drives!) faster. It also uncovers lots
| of hidden system files.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| It drives me bonkers that when I hit the Windows key and type
| "bash", the first suggestion is _always_ "Git Bash", which I
| have never used, when I truly want it to just run "bash" from
| WSL, which is not only a perfect text match, but actually gets
| used.
|
| But not only is "bash" not the first result, it's not even the
| second, third, or fourth. Between the "Best match" of "Git
| Bash" and the actual "bash" command is 10 web search results
| that I have zero interest in and have never had an interest in.
|
| I just don't get it. "bash" is an exact string match and always
| the result I choose. How is "Git Bash" still considered the
| "Best match"?
| okasaki wrote:
| When I type in 'reboot' it gives me Reboot the movie in some
| online store.
|
| They have played us for fools.
| wizzard0 wrote:
| one of the must-have things to have on every windows machine
| donglebix wrote:
| I agree with all of the comments above...
| niux wrote:
| Is there a tool similar to this one on MacOS?
| xnyan wrote:
| It's literally the only thing from windows I miss. NTFS gives
| you a journal of all FS events that's virtually instant for
| "free" (only free as in no additional cost beyond what windows
| is already incurring, there's definitely overhead). In my
| limited research Mac APIs like FSEvents are not enough to
| recreate this.
| speed_spread wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of live queries in BeFS.
|
| I like how 30+ year old NT architecture comes back again to
| solve things in ways that no other major OS has developed
| since then.
| ragazzina wrote:
| It's funny: I cannot install Everything on my work computer,
| despite the fact that my productivity would easily be 3000%
| higher with it.
| beart wrote:
| Not sure what your limitations are, but it is possible to run
| everything in portable mode. You just won't have the background
| service to maintain the index.
| copperx wrote:
| How does it maintain the index then? Isn't using the Windows
| indexing service the reason it works so fast?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| It reads the MFT. Then it stores its own index in a file
| called 'everything.db' which I am pretty sure is a sqlite
| file.
|
| I don't think the windows indexing service is utilized at
| all.
| brnt wrote:
| My work had software that disables any execution of
| nonwhitelisted binaries.
| irobeth wrote:
| some endpoint protection services will block anything not
| signed by a trusted signature or that doesn't match an allow-
| list of known-good file hashes
| eviks wrote:
| Do other file systems like Mac APFS or newer Linux ones support
| this functionality in principle (so that a similar tool can be
| created)?
| hollerith wrote:
| Yes: you can build an index of file names on any file system.
| eviks wrote:
| No, it's not that simple. Everything is using native NTFS
| index/journal, which is behind its unique feature: real-time
| updates of literally everything
|
| Other tools building an index via other methods can't do this
| as fast (creating the initial index and keeping it up-to-
| date) There is no other equivalent app outside of Windows
|
| Thus I'm wondering whether newer FS can support this in
| principle, and maybe there is hope such an app can be created
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| In other FS/OS you'd need to use stuff like inotify/kqueue
| to build your own equivalent of USN Journal, but yeah.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Microsoft should buy them out and add bing to get a bang for the
| buck. Building functional software as a ex tortion tool for
| intentionally dysfunctional ecosystems. 2024..
| TillE wrote:
| Buy what? It's an MIT-licensed project.
| backspace_ wrote:
| I strongly disagree. I can not envision this software being
| added to windows as some kind of system software without it
| getting messed up somewhere along the line. It is a great piece
| of software and does a specific job really well. Let's leave it
| as is.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| When I was at Microsoft I already knew the answer but asked
| around - just to be sure - and the reason is.... *drumroll*
| ...It bypasses NTFS ACLs (because it works by indexing the raw
| MFT)
|
| Microsoft sells Windows as secure/securable OS: filesystem
| permissions must be enforced (of course, FS ACLs are a huge
| part of the reason why Windows' files-on-disk UX isn't the
| best).
|
| Yes, Microsoft _could_ still buy it and then redistribute it as
| a power-toy strictly for single-user computers, but why would
| they do that? There's no secret-sauce in Everything.exe - a
| summer intern could recreate it in a couple of weeks. Oh, and
| don't forget the support costs from people who didn't read the
| README and installed it on a multiuser machine and can now see
| the very non-Elizabethan-era file names inside innocent little
| Timmy's My Documents\Homework\English\Shakespeare\ directory.
| taviso wrote:
| This seems like a weak excuse, the same problem exists on
| UNIX, but slocate solves it well enough. The slocate solution
| is to build the index _and_ record permission and ownership,
| then it can restrict output to entries you have permission to
| see at query time.
| eviks wrote:
| That's a poor excuse:
|
| - permissions is also something you could store in the db and
| hide Timmy's files
|
| - Also, install requires admin, and admin can already see
| Timmy's files
|
| > but why would they do that?
|
| Because it's an awesome productivity app
|
| > Oh, and don't forget the support costs
|
| Hard to keep in mind the legendary helpful MS self help
| forums costing a fortune to host!
|
| And the "few weeks intern" is just nonsense, Everything even
| after many years of developments still has plenty of room to
| improve
| fuzztester wrote:
| bing. bang. buck. 2024?
|
| er. heard this somewhere before. much before.
|
| embrace. extend. extinguish. ?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| they will never. windows search today is to increase bing
| traffic and show ads, much like the whole OS
| nirav72 wrote:
| Yeah, it has been pretty bad in win11. But at least you can
| disable the bing search. (For now)
| BizarroLand wrote:
| If you've never used the HTTP server, you're doing yourself a
| disservice.
|
| It creates a locally hosted web page that you can use to share
| with everyone on the network a fast file search client.
|
| Highly recommended! Throw in an nginx reverse proxy for https
| support and you are off to the races.
| lucb1e wrote:
| This is advice meant for server systems, I imagine?
| UberFly wrote:
| Directory Opus recently integrated Everything into their app.
| Adds some really nice functionality.
| copperx wrote:
| Is there a macOS app that works like this? Alfred has this
| functionality, but sometimes it fails to find files.
| arm wrote:
| Doesn't work as insanely quickly as voidtools' _Everything_ ,
| but I use Thomas Tempelmann's _Find Any File_ as my
| _Everything_ replacement on macOS:
|
| https://findanyfile.app/
| lelandfe wrote:
| Alfred does use its own index, instead of Spotlight's, so it is
| certainly miles faster than macOS's built in search; make sure
| to check what directories are being searched over in settings.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I've used Everything for as long as I can remember, and it has
| completely spoiled me on search/launcher functionality. Perfect
| UI, perfect results ordering (no cute prediction about what you
| _might_ want), and, of course, _truly instant_ results and a
| _truly live_ index - it will find files created one millisecond
| ago.
|
| I also use Launchy specifically for launching programs. Same
| instant results, though not live-indexed.
|
| Which makes me question every single time I use the Windows
| default search box: How? How is one of the most fundamental
| features of the biggest software platform in history, made by one
| of the biggest companies in history, after decades, still not
| even close to as good as multiple basic indie replacements?
|
| To me, when I think about how hopelessly bad popular software is
| (or becomes), this is the representative little example that
| comes to mind.
| wfurney wrote:
| PowerToys run and FlowLauncher both have good plugins that use
| Everything:
|
| https://github.com/lin-ycv/EverythingPowerToys
|
| https://github.com/Flow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher.Plugin.Everyt...
| devindotcom wrote:
| I have more or less the same setup and frustrations. I just
| have a list of things in my head (certain settings panels,
| calculator app) that I know neither Everything nor Launchy can
| find, and those are the one time that week I click the start
| button. Pretty sad. But really I'm happy with the other tools.
| summerlight wrote:
| > Which makes me question every single time I use the Windows
| default search box: How? How is one of the most fundamental
| features of the biggest software platform in history, made by
| one of the biggest companies in history, after decades, still
| not even close to as good as multiple basic indie replacements?
|
| The worse thing is that it used to work much better in the
| Windows 7 era. I don't know what happened there and how they
| justified this launch of massive quality degradation.
| krapp wrote:
| I think it had to do with their decision to design Windows as
| "app first," meaning around the assumption that everyone will
| be using it on a tablet or a phone.
|
| I don't know why that specifically means search and even
| folders (a folder with nothing but text files will load so
| slowly it has a loading bar) are broken but it can't be a
| coincidence.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I don't know much about filesystems, but I have heard it said
| (including at least one comment in this thread) that only NTFS
| enables the live indexing of Everything, and that there is not an
| equal tool on Mac because of this. Can anybody corroborate or
| give details about why? APFS is a very recent filesystem, and it
| was designed by Apple - so if this capability really is absent,
| presumably that's on purpose, as a tradeoff for something.
| guizb wrote:
| The tradeoff is that file systems like NTFS or HFS+ (and other
| journaled file systems), can take up more space and incur write
| penalties (To file itself, to the log, metadata etc...). APFS
| is as you point out a newer more modern file system, that has
| efficient resource sharing (like copy on write) and snapshot
| support.
|
| You can have a fast indexed based search on APFS, but you'll
| pay for it with a very large index size, which the average user
| doesn't want.
| danbruc wrote:
| I used UltraSearch [1] a few times and I think it does a similar
| thing to Everything, access the NTFS data structures directly so
| that it provides essentially instant search results and directly
| after installation without the need to build an index first.
|
| [1] https://www.jam-software.de/ultrasearch
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| FSearch is a FOSS alternative for unix-like systems
|
| https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch
| takoid wrote:
| If you love Everything for its speed, give WizTree
| (https://diskanalyzer.com) a try. It also uses the NTFS MFT and
| is a faster alternative to WinDirStat.
| disillusioned wrote:
| Where has this been all my life? As others have mentioned,
| there's no bigger indictment on the bloat and degradation of
| quality of Windows than how criminally bad Windows Search is, to
| say nothing of the fact that, say, my ~1k items Downloads folder
| can take geological time to start showing results depending on
| the context.
|
| This is truly incredible.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| How come I've missed this for so many years? I've been using a
| really old (paid) version of Advanced Disk Catalog by Elcomsoft
| (yes, the forensic company) but I think it's time for a change.
| nirav72 wrote:
| Everything hooked into windows powertoys makes it even better.
| You can then simply search from the launcher bar.
| 38 wrote:
| source:
|
| https://voidtools.com/Everything-SDK.zip
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-28 23:00 UTC)