I have seen so many applications like this, and they seem to miss that the backend of windows search is actually pretty amazing, and has providers for a multitude of file types both binary and text, which allows for full content search and not just file name, title, and description.
The truth is too its actually really easy to access programmatically.
Instead of them rolling their own indexer, they should use something like elastic which has an on par number of providers for various file types.
If the backend of Windows Search is amazing, why is the front-end user experience abysmal? The problems just don't seem like front end problems: the search is occasionally slow, it doesn't even reliably find installed programs by their name, and if the result pops up while your next keystroke is underway it will sometimes lose the result even if that keystroke is correct, and somehow finding the result again will require removing more than the single correct keystroke that made your desired result disappear. The mind boggles.
I'm not familiar with Windows internals, so I should clarify: I'm talking about the search functionality invoked by typing after pressing the Windows key.
If I were an app developer in this space I would not trust my core functionality to anything even remotely associated with the above, and I strongly suspect that the complexity of handling the long tail of functionality you mentioned has something to do with why the windows-key search experience sucks. Certainly the fundamental task is not intractable because Spotlight (Apple's search) has been Good Enough for a while. IIRC it became tolerable around the time SSDs became standard. Windows-key search isn't quite there yet. Until it is, I'll take good execution on the basic 80% of functionality any day.
The front end is a mystery to me, windows search backend is a queryable system, it's reliable, impressively fast, and suffers from none of the issues that have plagued not only the win10 search, but windows explorer as well.
I've never understood why it's performance has been deemed acceptable.
The only issue I have seen is when the index corrupts, this was more common in win7, and in our research it was often the result from an over aggressive AV jamming up the process.
But I've written a number of systems that make use of this, and when comparing other ways to accomplish this sort of in depth search, it's the most reliable and manageable.
It does have the caveat that it works best on places indexed by the OS, and adding locations to the indexer via code requires some pinvoke stuff most people aren't comfortable with.
There seems to be more than one index. There is the index of scanned file content, an index for apps, and maybe another one for help. There is also a query timeout. If you start searching after a boot on a slow laptop you get a subset of results dependent on which index is loaded before the query times out. Kill the start menu and try again. And again. And then it works smoothly. It's quite poor.
Wait, by Elastic, do you mean Elasticsearch? Genuinely curious, as I've only ever used it for large scale log ingestion/APM etc. in our production clusters, but what's the overhead on a single user machine?
I do mean elastic search, and the hardest part is automating the installer, integrating the providers for all the file types you want, and building the first index,in a passive manor.
But once you do that the overhead isnt horrible, you do the indexing on change, and results comeback as fast as a typical small query, 10 seconds tops on a typical desktop machine.
We wrote a scheduler that on windows monitored the windows indexer itself, when it kicked off we scheduled it, and trigged it once the system finished.
I don't honestly recommend it over windows search, but if portability, and multi system searching is required it worked great.
But not a task for those who are crunched for time, or lack resolve.
Just enable the next-gen search bar for Windows 10 - I've used both and the native tool is far better on the latest versions of Windows 10 (at least in my testing).
I'm a Windows user 10, and have never even heard of this feature before.
The standard search feature in the start menu is atrocious, at least as bad as it was in Vista and 7. I actually stopped using it years ago, because it just.does.not.work. I honestly don't know how such a terrible feature has been allowed to remain in Windows for so long.
At least from the linked article, it sounds like this might solve the problem - really keen to try it out!
I always had a fondness for Gnome DO, which I believe predates Alfred by a few years. https://do.cooperteam.net/ Does anyone know the original text based launcher? Quicksilver perhaps?
I think Quicksilver is the one that started the trend that has persisted for the last 16 years or so — and that trend certainly increased with Spotlight’s introduction with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in 2005 — although as mentioned below, LaunchBar predates it by 6 or 7 years. But Quicksilver really introduced (as far as I remember) the UI that most other modern launchers still use, and that Spotlight later “stole” — which is to do the search in the middle of the desktop.
LaunchBar is probably the OG, but I think most of what has come since (including LB, which remains excellent), was influenced by Quicksilver in the early aughts.
I use synapse[0], although I'm not sure if it has all the same features. I think it can do things like search the web, but I pretty much only use it to search/launch programs, and occasionally some files.
This doesn't seem to have anything remotely similar to powerpack. To give an example, can this help me get passwords out of LastPass into my clipboard in a couple keystrokes? Can it help me change what Spotify song is playing? Can it help me find and kill processes? Alfred can do all that and much much more.
If it isn't even in the same ballpark of tools (i.e. something that supports programmable workflows and has a bona fide community building such extensions), don't call it an alternative.
We're still building the backend, but playing with the widget should give you an idea of what the tool can do. It 's not meant to complete with desktop based launchers like the one mentioned in the thread so far.
Just hit win+s in Windows 10, it's not quite as nice as spotlight on the Mac, but it helps keep your hands on the keyboard if you're transitioning to Windows.
Keyperhinha + Voidtools Everything + Autohotkey to override windows 10 protected bindings like win+s or simple win etc. I also always replace the start menu with classic start menu.
I use Launchy in "Portable" mode (because my work PC is locked down and I may not install Launchy on it). After some 1) significant amount of config-tweaking, 2) learning curve involving moodiness on Launchy's part, and 3) learning about certain keyboard-shortcuts, it works like a charm. The fact that it's Portable is a HUGE plus to me.
I'm going to give Jarvis and Wox Launcher test-drives, if they're available in Portable mode.
