Lumen local file search utility

Hi everyone, I'm HX, a Windows developer.
I built Lumen, a local file search utility for Windows 10 and 11 designed to combine MFT speed with a clean Desktop Acrylic keyboard interface and SQLite FTS5 document search. It's currently in v1.5.0, 100% offline and free. I'd love feedback from power users on how it performs across large multi-drive setups.
I can share it's Github repository link.

Welcome to the forum. Nice to have you join us.

Welcome to the Forum HX here is 10 points for filling out your specs.

Hi and Welcome @HX_Software

I am a power user, but i do not use windows any longer. In the past i did have a lot of complain on Windows 7,8,10 and 11 file search as it sucks and winXP file search was ten times better.
So sadly i can not be of any help, but i wish you welcome to Elevenforum.

Tried it, but not for me.
It's indeed very fast and found many files pretty much instantly with a variety of search terms. I've only tried with a single drive (I don't have a multi disk computer available at the moment), so no multi drive search test here.

My main pain points were:

- The program requires admin access right at startup. This is a severe problem for a file search program, as most files to be searched aren't on admin-only folders, it's simply not reasonable to take the security impact of this.. Admin at the install is of course OK and it could be acceptable to drop a service with the necesary permissions for the MFT search, but I find too much for a search program to elevate at every use, which also precludes a run at startup scheme. It should be ideally possible to have a fallback to more normal searches (with optional caches) for non-admin uses.

- I find the UI a bit too simplistic. It only shows a filename and a tiny full path, and barely anything else. Compare with similar programs that show quite a few details about the found files. Also the result size seems too big, needing to scroll after the first 5 or 6 results. It should be possible to enlarge the result screen or shrink a bit the result size for a greater information density on-screen.

- The very existence of a GitHub repository is very misleading. It only contains a readme file and a download link, but no source code at all. I also failed to find any kind of license anywhere (maybe it was just me), but GitHub hints that it should be an open source program while in fact it's not. There should always be some license terms and either make it open source and post on GitHub, or drop GitHub entirely and host on your website.

- Large binary and download size for a program this (aparently) simple program. Similar tools are substancially smaller.

- The cache database is keept in the AppData of the admin user used to elevate at startup. If we use different users to elevate each time, we get different databases and duplicate caches. It would be better to maybe store it in ProgramData for a shared database instead.

- It completely fails to search the most simple patters. for example "*.exe" for finding all the executables returns nothing, when there should be thousands of results. It seems that it's only able to search using a "contains" filter.

- The UI buttons and controls at both the status bar and the document types are completely ilegible. Their text color is almost the same as the backgroud.

- A bug: At startup, if I reply NO to the UAC prompt, the program hangs on the "loading" screen. The only way out of it is to kill it with task manager.

Here are some questions (not necesarily pain points) I've came to:

- How does it handle non-NTFS drives? The MFT used here is a NTFS-only thing, so how does it works in presence of a FAT32 drive for example?

- How does it refresh its cache? If I move and rename files around, does it still finds them by the new names/locations?

- Does it caches removable drives content? I'm wondering if I swap an external disk for another if the search results are consistent with the currently plugged disk or it might return data from the older one.

- What actual filter it does when you chose "documents", "images" and the like? Does it filter for a set of known (hardcoded) extensions?

Hi Alejandro85,

Thank you so much for taking the time to break all of this down. Seriously, as a solo dev, getting this kind of detailed, hands-on feedback is absolute gold for me.

To answer your technical questions:

• Non-NTFS Drives: MFT parsing is strictly NTFS right now, so FAT32/exFAT drives get skipped. A fallback directory crawler is planned for v1.6.
• Cache Refresh: It uses a multi-drive FileSystemWatcher with 64KB buffers to pick up file renames and moves in real time.
• Removable Drives: Currently it just tracks drive letters, so hot-swapping under the same letter requires a manual refresh for now. Native Volume Serial Number tracking via WM_DEVICECHANGE is on my radar for a future update.
• Filters: Very basic right now, just checking against hardcoded lists of extensions (.pdf, .docx, etc. for Docs; .jpg, .png, etc. for Images).

What I'm actively patching/changing:

• UAC / Admin Privilege: You're right, popping a UAC prompt on every boot is super annoying for a daily driver. I'm refactoring the background engine into a proper Windows Service (similar to how Everything handles it) so it installs once with admin rights, leaving the UI to launch quietly as a standard user. I'm also fixing that unhandled ERROR_CANCELLED (1223) crash so canceling UAC doesn't freeze the splash screen.
• UI: Working on proper manual customization controls for scaling, tinting, accessibility, and an adjustable compact view.
• Licensing & GitHub: I'll be adding an explicit Freeware License Agreement. I'm also considering open-sourcing older versions of Lumen down the line; honestly, marketing isn't my strong suit and my focus right now is just making sure the core tool actually works reliably before opening up the repo.

Thanks again for putting so much thought into this review. Knocking these out for an upcoming release.

Wellcome to the forum @HX_Software

Marie SWE said:

Hi and Welcome @HX_Software

I am a power user, but i do not use windows any longer. In the past i did have a lot of complain on Windows 7,8,10 and 11 file search as it sucks and winXP file search was ten times better.
So sadly i can not be of any help, but i wish you welcome to Elevenforum.

Click to expand...

Power User is such a meaningless phrase.

Technically everybody is a Power User unless your computing devices do not require electricity (slide rules, log tables, Abaci etc.)

I love it when people use this phrase - does it mean somebody has a recognised certification?

Does using such a phrase give the person a confirmed superiority over other users?

To me, this phrase is like saying "I am a politician or a lawyer" and we all know what we think about them lol.

cereberus said:

Does using such a phrase give the person a confirmed superiority over other users?

Click to expand...

I would replace "confirmed" with perceived...

cereberus said:

Power User is such a meaningless phrase.

Technically everybody is a Power User unless your computing devices do not require electricity (slide rules, log tables, Abaci etc.)

I love it when people use this phrase - does it mean somebody has a recognised certification?

Does using such a phrase give the person a confirmed superiority over other users?

To me, this phrase is like saying "I am a politician or a lawyer" and we all know what we think about them lol.

Click to expand...

Sadly its not me that have invented the meaning of the word "Power User" its started as far as back in the 80's and became a world wide usage in the late 90's if i remember right. So i will stick to the phrasing. *lol*
But you can always write in to wikipedia Power user - Wikipedia and tell them that it is a bad use of wording.

Marie has a badge that says Power User with two stars. If it’s on the Internet, we gotta believe it.

To anyone well versed in this field, "Power user" has a clear meaning, it conveys you're familiar with the common operations and advanced topics and are able to use and comprehend specific terminology and concepts above the basics.

Does it have a perfectly clearly defined meaning? No
Does one have an official certification? No
Is it an official thing that nobody can exagerate? No
Does it conveys a clear thing to the one receiving it? Yes

To the people that usually work with computers and software, not just this forum, it has a meaning.

Every single field of human knowledge has an equivalent thing.

pseymour said:

Marie has a badge that says Power User with two stars. If it’s on the Internet, we gotta believe it.

Click to expand...

*LOL* yeah the badge cant be wrong. *LOL*

Alejandro85 said:

To anyone well versed in this field, "Power user" has a clear meaning, it conveys you're familiar with the common operations and advanced topics and are able to use and comprehend specific terminology and concepts above the basics.

Does it have a perfectly clearly defined meaning? No

Click to expand...

Yes. A power user is anyone who knows just enough knowledge to be dangerous to their IT admin.

I'm a Power User! I have the Power to smash this fecking keyboard into small fragments if it p*sses me off 57 or 58 more times!!!

Wow, so much power here!!! i'm worried.

garlin said:

A power user is anyone who knows just enough knowledge to be dangerous to their IT admin.

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A power user is anyone who thinks they need to be an administrator because they don't know what an ordinary user can do.

Modern Windows Pro still has a "Power Users" group, so we can add them to it, and they get an elevation prompt when they start regedit. Or is that too cruel?

Skeptic Mike said:

Modern Windows Pro still has a "Power Users" group, so we can add them to it, and they get an elevation prompt when they start regedit. Or is that too cruel?

Click to expand...

In legacy Windows, adding someone to Power Users meant you could delegate system tasks like adding/removing printers without being an Administrator. Over time, as normal users were granted these rights using UAC approval, the original Windows group became useless.

But it's still around for backwards compatibility.

Could someone from the Power User group please list the factors which separates them from we ordinary,everyday user group?

@HX please look at Voidtools' Everything for a polished tool with a slick GUI.