cboxdoerfer/fsearch

FSearch is a fast file search utility, inspired by Everything Search Engine. It's written in C and based on GTK3.

• For bug reports and feature requests please use the issue tracker: https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch/issues
• For discussions and questions about FSearch use the discussion forum: https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch/discussions
• For everything else related to FSearch you can talk to me on Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#fsearch:matrix.org

Features

• Instant (as you type) results
• Advanced search syntax
• Wildcard support
• RegEx support
• Filter support (only search for files, folders or everything)
• Include and exclude specific folders to be indexed
• Ability to exclude certain files/folders from index using wildcard expressions
• Fast sort by filename, path, size or modification time
• Customizable interface (e.g., switch between traditional UI with menubar and client-side decorations)

Requirements

• GTK 3.22
• GLib 2.60
• glibc 2.19 or musl 1.1.15 (other C standard libraries might work too, those are just the ones I verified)
• PCRE2 (libpcre2) 10.21
• ICU 4.4

Download

It is recommended to install FSearch from one of the Stable packages, unless you know what you're doing.

The Development packages are primarily intended for testing and adventurous users.

(*) Not maintained by me

Roadmap

https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch/wiki/Roadmap

Build Instructions

https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch/wiki/Build-instructions

Localization

The localization of FSearch is managed with Weblate.

https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/fsearch/

If you want to contribute translations please submit them there, instead of opening pull requests on GitHub. This also includes any suggestions to the English texts — English isn't my first language, so there are likely errors and unusual wordings.

Instructions can be found here: https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/user/basic.html

And of course: Thank you for taking the time to translate FSearch!

Current Limitations

• Sorting lots of results by Type can be very slow, since gathering that information is expensive, and the data isn't indexed. This also means that when the view is sorted by Type, searching will reset the sort order to Name.
• Using the Move to Trash option doesn't update the database index, so trashed files/folders show up in the result list as if nothing happened to them.

Why yet another search utility?

Performance. On Windows I really like to use Everything Search Engine. It provides instant results as you type for all your files and lots of useful features (regex, filters, bookmarks, ...). On Linux I couldn't find anything that's even remotely as fast and powerful.

Before I started working on FSearch, I took a look at existing solutions. I tried MATE Search Tool (formerly GNOME Search Tool), Recoll, Krusader (locate based search), SpaceFM File Search, Nautilus, ANGRYsearch and Catfish, to find out whether it makes sense to improve those. However, they're not exactly what I was looking for:

• standalone application (not part of a file manager)
• written in a language with C like performance
• no dependencies to any specific desktop environment
• Qt5 or GTK3 based
• small memory usage (both hard drive and RAM)
• target audience: advanced users

Looking for a command line interface?

I highly recommend fzf or the obvious tools: find and (m)locate

Why GTK3 and not Qt5?

I like both of them, and my long term goal is to provide console, GTK3 and Qt5 interfaces, or at least make it easy for others to build those. However, for the time being it's only GTK3 because I like C more than C++, and I'm more familiar with GTK development.

Questions?

Email: christian.boxdoerfer[AT]posteo.de