Windows Search Alternatives
Windows Search
Windows Search, formerly known as Windows Desktop Search (WDS) on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, is an indexed desktop search platform created by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows.
Windows Search builds a full-text index of files on a computer. Searches are performed not only on file names, but also on the contents of the file (provided a proper handler for the file type is installed) as well as the keywords, comments and all other forms of metadata that Windows Search recognizes.
Windows Search features incremental search search (also known as "search as you type"). It begins searching as soon as characters are entered in the search box, and keeps on refining and filtering the search results as more characters are typed in. This results in finding the required files even before the full search text is entered.
Windows Search supports IFilters, components that enable search programs to scan files for their contents and metadata. Once an appropriate IFilter has been installed for a particular file format, the IFilter is used to extract the text from files which were saved in that format. Windows Search by default includes IFilters for common filetypes, including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, HTML files, text files, MP3 and WMA music files, WMV, ASF and AVI video files and JPEG, BMP and PNG images.
Best Free Windows Search Alternatives
For the best Windows Search alternative check out these alternatives which will work with your device & platform. There are several Windows Search-like software that you might want to check as well.
Everything
FreeWindowsFile and folder lookup tool that searches across local, removable, and network mapped drives.
Features:
- File Searching
- Instant results
- Support for regular expressions
- Data export/import
- Exclude files and folders
- Monitor File Changes
- File management
- File Searching
- Portable
DocFetcher
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxDocFetcher is a portable German/English open source desktop search application. It allows you search the contents of documents on your computer. - You can think of it as...
Features:
- Search-in-files
- Indexed search
- Online Photo Editor
- Reads odt files
- File content indexing
- File Searching
- Full text search
- Portable
- Search in Archives
- Semantic Search
- Shared folders
Locate32
FreeOpen SourceWindowsLocate32 is software which can be used to find files from your harddrives and other locations. It works like updatedb and locate commands in Unix based systems. In other...
Features:
- Auto Indexing
- File management
- File Searching
Recoll
FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxBSDThis package is a personal full text search package which is based on a very strong backend (Xapian), for which it provides an easy to use and feature-rich interface. ...
Features:
- File Searching
- Indexed search
- Search-in-files
- File preview
- File Searching
- Full text search
- Low memory usage
- Semantic Search
EasyFind
FreeMacEasyFind is an alternative to (or supplement of) Spotlight to find files, folders, or contents in any file without indexing.
Features:
- File management
- File Searching
Search Monkey
FreeWindowsLinuxBSDA fast real-time search engine for displaying regular expression matches (both file name and content) across multiple directories. Written in JAVA it is highly...
Features:
- Real-Time Search
- Content Searching
- File Searching
- Portable
UltraSearch
FreeWindowsUltraSearch searches files and folders on local NTFS drives and provides the results within just a few seconds. UltraSearch does NOT maintain an index which is stored...
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