Find Files More Easily And Quickly with FSearch
Almost all file managers come with a search feature. Additionally, search features are often integrated into Launchers. However, even with these built-in search features, the results are often unsatisfactory—files might exist but aren't found, or the search is slow.
If you're not satisfied with the built-in app's search performance, this app can be quite reliable. Yes, FSearch, short for Fast File Search, is a file search application inspired by the Everything Search Engine. The app is written in C based on GTK3.
Features:
- Instant results, visible as you type.
- Search using syntax.
- Supports wildcard.
- Supports RegEx.
- Supports search filters.
- Choose which folders to search and which to exclude.
- Ability to exclude searches using wildcard expressions.
- Quickly sorts results (filename, path, size, or modification time).
- Customizable interface.
Advantages:
- Lightweight, consumes little RAM.
- Fast, quicker than the built-in file manager search tool.
- Standalone, not part of another app, purely a search application
- Full-featured.
- No other dependencies, easy to remove or reinstall.
Disadvantages:
- Data grouping or sorting by Type is slow.
- Using the Move to Trash option doesn't update the data index. Thus, even if moved to the trash, it still appears in search results.
Installation
For those who want to try this app, it can be installed via flatpak, snap, or PPA. For PPA, simply type:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:christian-boxdoerfer/fsearch-stable
Press Enter, then:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install fsearch
Or visit https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch for more details.
Usage
When first opened, FSearch cannot be used immediately. You need to specify which folders you always want to use in the search. FSearch will index them. For example, if I only want to search files in the home folder, select the home folder. You can choose folders in Edit > Preferences > Database tab.
After indexing is complete, you can perform searches.
What if there are new files in the folder? Will it immediately index or update the file database?
Yes, when closing and reopening the FSearch app, it will automatically re-index the selected folders.
