Any recommendations for desktop Search applications with a perpetual license?

ship169 · Oct 26, 2024

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for recommendations for a desktop search application to replace X1 Search on my Surface Laptop 7 running Windows 11 (64 bit) on an ARM processor.

REQUIREMENTS:

Indexed Searches – I need a tool that builds an index to allow fast, efficient searches, rather than relying on real-time searching from scratch.
Field-Specific Searches – My work involves a variety of data formats, so the ability to search within specific fields (e.g., within emails, documents, PDFs etc.) is crucial.
Boolean Logic – I need simple Boolean options, particularly "NOT" logic, to help narrow down search results effectively.
Budget – I’d happily pay up to $50 for a perpetual license to avoid ongoing costs, as I don’t want to risk losing access to my tools if I can’t cover subscription fees in the future!

BACKGROUND
Unfortunately, X1.com have let me down by no longer hosting the installation files for my perpetual license version (v8.6), leaving me unable to reinstall software I’d paid to use indefinitely. i.e. They now only offer subscription-based licenses with time-bombed access, which I want to avoid.

EXPLANATION (WHY I HATE TIME-BOMBED LICENSING!)
This is a matter of principle:

All these subscription fees have a nasty way of adding up to more than you might think.
As a freelancer/entrepreneur I may or may not actually use each of these tools.
My own time is more valuable than my money! Having invested in learning these tools, I don’t want to lose that investment.
I don't want the hassle of remembering to turn on /off my subscriptions
(WORSE, if/when times are tight, I need to rely on my tools without worrying they’ll vanish just because of a missed payment!)

Any recommendations for (ARM-compatible) search tools with a perpetual license?

Thanks in advance!

J

FreeBooter · Oct 26, 2024

Alternative to Windows Search For Files + Duplicates Search

Alternative to the standard Search For Files And Folders module of Windows. Duplicates search is also supported.

www.nirsoft.net

FreeBooter · Oct 26, 2024

Downloads - voidtools

www.voidtools.com

ship169 · Oct 26, 2024

FreeBooter said:
Downloads - voidtools

www.voidtools.com

Ah... yes "Everything" is fabulous and I use it a lot. But it only searches file names.

J

Berton · Nov 11, 2024

ship169 said:
Unfortunately, X1.com have let me down by no longer hosting the installation files for my perpetual license version (v8.6), leaving me unable to reinstall software I’d paid to use indefinitely. i.e. They now only offer subscription-based licenses with time-bombed access, which I want to avoid.

Just a tip, I save all my downloaded software to a NAS drive attached to my Router, saves headaches when needing to reinstall or add to a different computer.

hdmi · Nov 11, 2024

ship169 said:
Ah... yes "Everything" is fabulous and I use it a lot. But it only searches file names.

It doesn't. Searching - voidtools

siliconbeaver · Nov 11, 2024

NOT so sure,
why voidtools mentions Everything

hdmi said:
It doesn't. Searching - voidtools

pseymour · Nov 11, 2024

Everything will search contents if you add

content:someTextHere

to the search. Version 1.5 will add context indexing.

hdmi · Nov 12, 2024

siliconbeaver said:
NOT so sure,
why voidtools mentions Everything

Because voidtools.com is the official website of Everything?

xxxxx451 · Nov 12, 2024

note that you need Everything 1.5 Alpha to enable Content indexing. It's not available in v1.4 release.

rpetruzz · Nov 12, 2024

This one isn't cheap... But I used it professionally for many years to search out program code that needed to be updated and changed in a Java environment across multiple projects. Search & Replace worked flawlessly and saved me hours and hours of work. I was the only developer willing to shell out for the cost so of course my management and co-workers came to me all the time to help them with "where would this code need to be changed" questions.

PowerGREP: Windows grep Software to Search (and Replace) through Files and Folders on Your PC and Network

Quickly search through large numbers of files on your PC or network using powerful text patterns to find exactly the information you want. Search and replace with plain text or regular expressions to maintain web sites, source code, reports, ...

www.powergrep.com

hdmi · Nov 12, 2024

You don't necessarily always need content indexing to be able to do content searching. Depending how you use it, non indexed content searching might still be able to satisfy your need. Content searching is available in Everything v1.4.1.1026 per the documentation I linked in my 1st reply. This same documentation also clearly states that the searching can be significally sped up in situations where it is possible to narrow down the search results i.e. by combining other functions and/or filters in such a way that these other functions and filters will narrow down the search results before the part that does the content searching.

The documentation about content indexing in Everything v1.5 Alpha also states that you should consider using your Windows index instead. Content Indexing - voidtools forum

KevTech · Nov 12, 2024

I just use XYplorer which can even search contents.
Purchased lifetime license back in 2007 for 29 dollars.
Free version is still available but no longer updated so may not have all these search options.

xxxxx451 · Nov 16, 2024

XYPlorer is a great file manager (it's also my daily driver) but imo, it can't really compete with a dedicated content search utility : the search will be slower (even more so if you're searching inside metadata or alternate data streams, and doesn't index content), also it won't display the exact location of matches inside a file. but it's still better than the windows search

more alternatives:

cli tools
without content indexing, the fastest solutions are grep based, there are free tools like `rga` (GitHub - phiresky/ripgrep-all: rga: ripgrep, but also search in PDFs, E-Books, Office documents, zip, tar.gz, etc.) or `ugrep` (https://github.com/Genivia/ugrep) if you don't mind using the cli/powershell.
Results will be almost instant (at least very fast compared to a windows search), they can search in filenames, file content and metadata and will highglight matching results + provide context.

desktop search apps
If you need a GUI and similar ux to X1, look at AgentRansack(free)/FileLocator Pro (pay once but you only get 1 year of free upgrapde).
Some free alternatives : DocFetcher or AnyTXT (which I never use b/c it's very resource intensive).
Recoll (Recoll -win version is 5$) is a desktop search utility with content indexing and context display (if you use Keypirinha launcher, there is a recoll plugin).
speaking of launchers /command bars with searching feature, we already mentioned Everything previously, there is also Listary

self-hosted app
Sist2 (GitHub - simon987/sist2: Lightning-fast file system indexer and search tool) is a system indexer and tagger with OCR, good if you want to index a network drive for multi-users.

idgat · Nov 16, 2024

Everything (VoidTools)
UltraSearch
Agent Ransack

hdmi · Nov 17, 2024

xxxxx451 said:
without content indexing, the fastest solutions are grep based, there are free tools like `rga` (GitHub - phiresky/ripgrep-all: rga: ripgrep, but also search in PDFs, E-Books, Office documents, zip, tar.gz, etc.) or `ugrep` (https://github.com/Genivia/ugrep) if you don't mind using the cli/powershell.

Do these solutions still lack IFilter support or did I miss something?

retexan599 · Nov 17, 2024

Is there a reason why Windows File History/Indexing Options would not provide the search capability requested by the OP? I have used it for years, it is free, built in, and includes content searching.

xxxxx451 · Nov 17, 2024

hdmi said:
Do these solutions still lack IFilter support or did I miss something?

afaik, ripgrep, rga and ugrep do not rely on iFilter at all (they don't need iFIlter, it works on byte level comparison)
Here's an article from the ripgrep dev for more details : ripgrep is faster than {grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift} - Andrew Gallant's Blog
and the readme from ripgrep : ripgrep/GUIDE.md at master · BurntSushi/ripgrep
ripgrep-all extends the search to pdfs, zip, ebooks, docs, etc... ugrep adds a fzf-like TUI
They return matching regex, very quickly, without any indexation, it's a fast and lightweight solution.

hdmi · Nov 17, 2024

xxxxx451 said:
afaik, ripgrep, rga and ugrep do not rely on iFilter at all (they don't need iFIlter, it works on byte level comparison)
Here's an article from the ripgrep dev for more details : ripgrep is faster than {grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift} - Andrew Gallant's Blog
and the readme from ripgrep : ripgrep/GUIDE.md at master · BurntSushi/ripgrep
ripgrep-all extends the search to pdfs, zip, ebooks, docs, etc... ugrep adds a fzf-like TUI
They return matching regex, very quickly, without any indexation, it's a fast and lightweight solution.

Yeah, but content searching cannot always easily be achieved without depending on IFilter support. The good news IMO is that Everything SDK can be used also in conjunction with these grep based solutions where feasible.

hdmi · Nov 17, 2024

retexan599 said:
Is there a reason why Windows File History/Indexing Options would not provide the search capability requested by the OP? I have used it for years, it is free, built in, and includes content searching.

Reasons I suspect primarily are the incredible slowness you get when trying to perform (multiple) content searches on (relatively) large amounts of file data and being often too heavily restricted by limited capabilities of AQS (Advanced Query Syntax) to be able to meet your goals, especially under those specific circumstances that can tend to be a little bit more advanced than most.

Any recommendations for desktop Search applications with a perpetual license?

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