Back to: Software
Name Info Platform URL
Agent Ransack https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/
AKIN (Advanced Knowledge & Information Nexus) Strange; hideous UI, questionable performance. http://www.grappledata.com/
Archivarius 3000 http://www.likasoft.com/
AnyTXT Searcher https://anytxt.net/
Copernic Desktop Search Very good UI and pace of development, but sometimes chokes on larger files (PDFs!) in the search results pane. https://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/
CSearcher
DeskRule Previewing of e.g. PDFs/doc files very rudimentary. https://www.zabkat.com/deskrule/
DocFetcher Pro https://docfetcherpro.com/feature-comparison/
dtSearch Nothing really touches this. Windows https://dtsearch.com/
Everything Just file names, no content search. But if it's just file names you need, it is WAY better than crappy Windows search. https://www.voidtools.com/
Exselo Desktop meh https://www.exselo.com/products/exselo_desktop.html
FileLocator Pro https://www.mythicsoft.com/filelocatorpro/
FileSearchy 2016 https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/filesearchy.html
Google Desktop https://softfamous.com/google-desktop/
GrepWin https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html
Listary
Locate32
Lookeen Outlook search tool. Now also desktop search, but doesn't highlight hits. http://www.lookeen.com/
Noggle https://www.noggle.online/
Puggle Desktop http://puggle.sourceforge.net/
Recoll Open source, but need to donate small amount to download https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/
SearchMyFiles
Seekfast The PDF previewer is all but worthless. https://seekfast.org/seekfast
SSuite Desktop Search Engine not indexed https://www.ssuiteoffice.com/software/desktopsearchengine.htm
TextFinding Poor previewing of files https://www.textfinding.com/
TextSeek https://www.textseek.net/en/download.htm
X1 Only indexes the first 20 MB of text! Hence useless to me.

See also various open source search technologies:

  • Lucene
    • Solr
    • Elasticsearch

Note: Solr and Elasticsearch are both based on Lucene.

External links