Live data from Hacker News

"Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows

voidtools.com

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: "Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows

#41

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..

they will never. windows search today is to increase bing traffic and show ads, much like the whole OS

Re: "Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows

#43
post #5

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.

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"?

Re: "Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows

#45
post #38
post #5

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.

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 f…

> 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.

Re: "Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows

#46

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..

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 redistri…

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

Re: "Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows

#47
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.

Re: "Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows

#48
post #8

Is there a tool similar to this one on MacOS?

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.

Re: "Everything" is a filename search engine for Windows

#49

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. Wh…

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.
Post reply on HN