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> We set out to solve one of the most frustrating problems we encounter daily – finding something we know we have seen before on our PC. Today, we must remember
by bambax 2y ago
> We set out to solve one of the most frustrating problems we encounter daily – finding something we know we have seen before on our PC. Today, we must remember what file folder it was stored in, what website it was on, or scroll through hundreds of emails trying to find it.
It is indeed frustrating that one still cannot search effectively a local device, but it doesn't need AI to solve. It needs a proper search engine, and Microsoft has resisted that, for some mysterious reason, for 30+ years.
- baby 2y agoI don’t understand why you say it doesn’t need AI. It’s like saying a financial application doesn’t need a database. Maybe it can use something else, but who cares what technology is used as long as it’s good? I’m willing to believe that AI is making this tech much more effective
- fassssst 2y agoSearch engines use language models.
- JohnFen 2y agoIt's really baffling, isn't it? A part of me wonders if Microsoft is simply unable to figure out how to make a good Windows search and so is looking for AI to do it for them. But it seems like shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun.
- butterNaN 2y agoIt is less baffling when you consider decisions are not being driven by engineers. Investors don't want a search engine. Investors (and other non-engineers) want "AI"
- spartanatreyu 2y agoMicrosoft has tried to make a "better" search before, by redesigning the file system and the metadata that can be tied to files. The idea was that you could search this: > the phone numbers of all persons who live in Acapulco and each have more than 100 appearances in my photo collection and with whom I have had e-mail within last month They had hyped this up as coming in Project Longhorn (which was eventually split into Vista and salvaged in Windows 7), but the new filesystem was eventually dropped like their other attempts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
- vbezhenar 2y agoThey should implement simple search first, so I don't need to reach grep for everything. Then they should implement pdftotext and fuzzy search. Of course everything should work instantly for small folders. That would be enough for 99% people.
- JohnFen 2y agoA million times this. Windows search is, as near as I can tell, completely worthless and I have to install other utilities to have working basic search. I don't need or want anything fancy like semantic searching. I just want to be able to grep and find things by filename.
- Joe_Cool 2y agoThe server version called "Windows Search Services" was rather alright. It was even integrated into the Win7 Libraries and you could search through contents server-side from Explorer. It supported plugins and was reasonably fast. Needed a lot of RAM though and some admin to babysit it.
- paxys 2y agoAnyone remember Google Desktop? Did the job perfectly 20 years ago.
- mktemp-d 2y agoIt always baffles me how long it takes for Windows to search for a file while the GNU's `find` command churns through filenames and paths like it's nothing.
- threePointFive 2y agoWork locks me into Outlook but god I wish I could just grep my inbox
- tristan957 2y agoIf your sysadmins are kind, Outlook can expose IMAP/SMTP.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoNirsoft's Search My Files gets me pretty close to Win2000 search.
- eviks 2y agoWindows Everything finds any file globally in the blink of an eye, let's you sort in real time by size/date, live-edit your query, and also perform operations on the result in the list, so much better that any find
- fnordian_slip 2y agoJust so there's no confusion, eviks means "everything" by voidtools, which is really amazing. The difference in search speed is like day and night.
- Joe_Cool 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- yread 2y agoWhat there are still people who don't install Voidtools' Everything on all Windows PCs and assign it a global shortcut? Since I have it I don't even bother organizing stuff
- joenot443 2y agoDoes anyone know of a similar tool for macOS? I'd gotten really comfortable with a Ctrl+Alt+S binding on Windows for Everything and miss it these days on macOS.
- least 2y agoSpotlight? There's HoudahSpot [1] for something a little more advanced. Third party launchers like Alfred [2] can also perform file searches. [1] https://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot/ https://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot/ [2] https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/
- luckman212 2y agoIt's nowhere near as fast as Everything on Windows, but Find Any File[0] aka FAF is a lifesaver for me and I consider it "indispensable" on macOS. [1] https://findanyfile.app https://findanyfile.app
- metadat 2y agoThis is the first time I've heard of it. https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/
- jwoq9118 2y agoThat plus Microsoft PoweToys (which inexplicably isn’t installed by default) are the only things that make Windows useable to me.
- Joe_Cool 2y agoIt's amazing. It does what Google Desktop tried and failed to do on Windows XP. And it's blazingly fast by reading NTFS directly instead of using the Windows API. (OK, back then needing 1GB of RAM was pretty much impossible.)
- ericswpark 2y agoThey had a perfectly working search box in Windows 7, then gutted it and made it search the web whenever you wanted to launch Notepad.
- wkat4242 2y agoIt worked ok for finding apps, not so much for random files or especially content within files.
- Joe_Cool 2y agoIf you had it index everything you want to find it would do just that. And be excruciatingly slow, unreliable and wasting Gigabytes of storage. All while consuming tons of CPU time in the background. The idea of an indexing service is good though. KDE's Baloo faces similar issues. It's not that easy to make it a good experience. Everything (mentioned in this thread) comes closest to being fast, reliable, and usable. It can even index external disks and search them while offline.
- wkat4242 2y agoYet spotlight did manage to do just that without those drawbacks. For some reason its accuracy has dropped in recent years but in the Tiger days it was really good.
- sexy_seedbox 2y ago> and made it search the web... How else would they trick you into opening and using Edge, the best web browser in the whole wide world? /s
- WuxiFingerHold 2y agoYep, but fd and rg work fine on Windows. However those CLI tools are not for pure Windows people, I admit.
- raxxorraxor 2y agoThere is locate32, which also builds an index, but then is blazingly fast. Windows does build an index too, but it doesn't feel like it uses it in any way.