{"id":2791,"date":"2025-10-31T02:40:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=2791"},"modified":"2025-10-31T02:40:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:40:12","slug":"i-found-everything-search-engine-alternative-for-linux-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=2791","title":{"rendered":"I Found Everything Search Engine Alternative for Linux Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"I<\/p>\n

A desktop-wide search application can be the key to speeding up your workflow by a significant amount, as anything you might look for will almost be at your fingertips at any given moment. <\/p>\n

Today, we’ll be looking at a GUI desktop application that does exactly that. <\/p>\n

FSearch: Fast, Feature-rich GUI Search App<\/h2>\n

FSearch<\/a> is a fast file search application, inspired by Everything Search Engine<\/a> on Windows. <\/p>\n

It works in an efficient way without slowing down your system, giving you results as you type the keywords in<\/strong>. The way it does this is by indexing the files from the directories in advance, updating them at a fixed interval, and storing that information to search through whenever the application is used.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/figure>\n

It is written in C and based on GTK3, which is ideal for GNOME users but might not look as good on Qt based desktop environments like KDE. Let’s look at some of the features this utility offers.<\/p>\n

Index Inclusion\/Exclusion<\/h3>\n

The first thing that you need to do after installation and the most crucial aspect of all is to specify to the utility what are the directories that you want it to search for anything in. Besides the inclusion category, you can also specify what directories you want excluded from the search. Another extremely helpful option is to exclude the hidden files from being searched which can be the case if you only want to search the files as you see them on your file explorer.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/figure>\n

Besides that, you can also configure how often the database needs to be refreshed and updated. This will depend on how often the relevant files on your system change, and hence should be your own choice.<\/p>\n

Wildcard and RegEx Support<\/h3>\n

The search input supports the wildcard mode by default, which are often used for specifications on the command line. For example, if I want to search for all files that contain “Black” in the name, I can give the input as such:<\/p>\n

\"I<\/figure>\n

Here, “*” essentially means everything. So any files with anything at all before and after the word “Black” will be listed. There are many more wildcards like this such as “?” for one missing character, and “[ ]” specifying ranges. You can read more about them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The other option is to specify the search results by the RegEx formatting<\/a>, which is a different style in itself. It can be activated using Ctrl+R, and switched by the same.<\/p>\n

Fast Sort<\/h3>\n

You can quickly sort out the results based on name, path, size or last modification date right from the interface, as the results are shown with these details present. All it takes is one click on the right detail header (or two clicks if you want them in a descending instead of an ascending order).<\/p>\n

Filetype Filter<\/h3>\n

The searched files can be of different categories defined in the utility itself, which are defined by the extensions of the files that the results yield. There is a button on the right of the search bar where the search results category can be specified, the default being “All”. The categories are:<\/p>\n