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Windows Search Alternatives

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 Windows Search Alternatives for Linux

Looking for the best programs similar to Windows Search? Check out our top picks. Let's see if there are any Windows Search alternatives that support your platform.

DocFetcher

DocFetcher

FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinux

DocFetcher 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
Recoll

Recoll

FreeOpen SourceMacWindowsLinuxBSD

This 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
Search Monkey

Search Monkey

FreeWindowsLinuxBSD

A 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

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