Best Desktop Search Software for Windows

Crestadoro

Brynner Industries

Crestadoro is a networkable file indexing and search tool. You can install it on multiple Windows machines, create libraries of documents that reside on each machine, then search and access the files from anywhere on your network. You can install Crestadoro on as many machines as you like, both the indexing engine and the search client are easy to set up. You can optionally use SQL Server to store the data if you don't want to use the internal storage mechanism that comes as standard (though it is pretty wizzy!). The Community Edition is completely free to use, you can have as many libraries as you want, the only limitation is that each library can only hold a maximum of 100 documents. Crestadoro is named in honor of Andrea Crestadoro, a chap who lived a couple of hundred years ago who is generally considered to be the first person to come up with the idea of indexing a book by its content rather than its title. He was also an inventor who came up with some bonkers ideas!

3 Ratings

Starting Price: £50

View Software

X1 Search

X1

Stop Searching and Start Finding with X1 Search! With X1 Search, you can instantly search and find the exact information you need across all your data sources, saving you up to 2 hours every day! X1 Search, powered by X1's fast-as-you-type search capabilities, provides users the fastest, simplest way to search across emails, attachments, documents, locals files and more in a single search, supercharging your productivity and enabling you to immediately find what you need. This easy-to-use desktop application streamlines user workflow for both business and personal use by rapidly searching years' worth of email, attachments, files and more, providing a consolidated view across all data sources, and producing more accurate results than any search tool you may find on your desktop. X1’s built-in hit highlighting and full-fidelity preview capabilities provide immediate visibility into your results, boosting your ability to instantly find exactly what you need.

5 Ratings

Starting Price: $79 per year

View Software

Slik Safe

Slik Safe is a Blazing Fast File Experience built to increase efficiency, speed and security. An end-to-end encrypted file storage solution that enables you to store, share and share your files in less than 5 seconds. Your files and folders, be it on cloud apps like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox etc or local devices, get backed up by connecting to the Slik Safe app on your device. All your files are encrypted on your local device with military grade protection before uploading it on the cloud. The app is designed in a way where it keeps running in the background, constantly backing up connected files and folders in real time. With Slik’s AI, you can retrieve a particular information from a specific file wherein all the details get extracted in Natural Language. So if you want the sum of Column 2 in your datasheet. Just type it, you get the answer.

1 Rating

Starting Price: $0

View Software

FileSearchEX

GOFF Concepts

FileSearchEX is the no-nonsense file search utility for Windows 7 and higher. It offers a classic and simplified search interface to make finding files and searching their contents a less frustrating experience. Enjoy the most natural way to locate files and folders on modern operating systems. FileSearchEX is a Windows search tool alternative that provides a standard context menu enabling it to blend in with the OS. This prevents user confusion on how to use the software. With low system requirements, easy network deployment, and locked down user account compatibility, FileSearchEX is the Windows search tool replacement you've been looking for. FileSearchEX runs well with LUA & SRP (limited user and locked down) accounts while still being easy to install by network administrators. Indeed, no installer is needed and admin rights are not required. No matter what software you have on your business systems, users will find it refreshing to have FileSearchEX's simplified search interface.

1 Rating

Starting Price: $100 per year

View Software

Everything

Voidtools

"Everything" is search engine that locates files and folders by filename instantly for Windows. Unlike Windows search "Everything" initially displays every file and folder on your computer (hence the name "Everything"). You type in a search filter to limit what files and folders are displayed. "Everything" only indexes file and folder names and generally takes a few seconds to build its database. A fresh install of Windows 10 (about 120,000 files) will take about 1 second to index. Everything can search file content with the content, search function. File content is not indexed, searching content is slow. A fresh install of Windows 10 (about 120,000 files) will use about 14 MB of ram and less than 9 MB of disk space. 1,000,000 files will use about 75 MB of ram and 45 MB of disk space. Your search windows will reflect changes made to the file system. "Everything" will run on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.

3 Ratings

View Software

Copernic Desktop Search

Copernic Technologies

There are few desktop search solutions on the market that offer the depth, relevance and context that Copernic’s Desktop Search can provide. It’s one thing to conduct fast searches. It’s a whole other ballgame finding exactly what you’re looking for. No IT experience required! Simply install our application and read our guides! With Copernic’s intuitive interface, you’ll be up-and-searching in no time flat. Thanks to Copernic’s advanced keyword map (index), unlock a wealth of information that is currently buried in your PC. We support over 150 file extensions and 11 languages! Once you have built your index in just a few steps, Copernic will immediately display search results that are the most aligned with your keyword search. Copernic does NOT collect any data. You can rest assured knowing all of your information is secure and cannot be access by any third party.

Starting Price: $49.95 one-time payment

View Software

TextSeek

Xiamen Zest Company

TextSeek is a professional full-text desktop search tool. TextSeek can search filename and file content easily and quickly. It supports PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, keynote and other formats. Features: 1. Minimalist design. The search box and results are as intuitive as Google, and the operation is convenient. You can preview the file content with highlighted keywords, and you can quickly browse the search results with ctrl+arrow shortcut keys. 2. Double search modes. Users can search directly without index (Easy mode), or index specific directories to speed up searching (Zone mode). 3. Cross-platform and multi-language. It supports Windows and Mac OS systems. It performs full-text search with no omission, and it can search through all languages by using UNICODE. The user interface supports Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Arabic and other languages. 4. Multiple search options. The results can be filtered by document type, file name, or file content.

Starting Price: $19.9 per three years

View Software

Directory Report

AMB Software

Show disk usage, directory printer, find duplicate files, rename files, and maintain your files - all in 1 tool Directory Report looks like the MS-Explorer but always shows the directory's size. This makes it easy to drill down to directories which are using all your disk space. Duplicate files are found by any combination of the same: Name, Size, Cyclic Redundancy Checksum (CRC32) or Comparing byte by byte Finds duplicate directories Multiple file rename Multiple file change date Multiple file change owner Powerful filters and report to many formats (Printer, Text file, Clipboard, Excel (CSV) file, Excel program, HTML file or XML file) Print a directory list and file list of an entire disk or a list of directories Prints DLL and EXE version information Prints AVI, MP3, MSI, WAV and MS-Office properties

Starting Price: $25

View Software

MightyGrep

Sunbound Software LLC

MightyGrep is a file finding and text searching application. File filters allow DOS semantics (wildcard * ?) or regex syntax. Users can view results in either a provided external editor or the built-in file viewer. Search results can be exported to either a file or clipboard. This program does not rely on filesystem indexing to function. This program searches both binary and plaintext.

Starting Price: $9.99

View Software

eSearch Pro

ElectronArt Design Ltd

eSearch Pro is a comprehensive full-text search (FTS) application for information retrieval. It is intended for professionals who need to quickly find information from large quantities of data in a wide range of sources, in any language. Unique features include: User translatable with free Language File Editor. German/French/English UI included. Switch languages immediately. Locale aware scrollable indexed word list. View source code with hit highlighting, syntax highlighting & line numbers. View images that contain geolocation metadata (GPS) on built-in map. Other power user features: Search with a list of words for eDiscovery. Multilingual stemming, user-defined & pre-defined synonyms. Numeric pattern matching with regex. Built in PDF viewer. Limit indexing by file types. Modern easy to use UI, dark/light mode. Aimed at EU market with accent/case sensitive indexing options. 30-day trial reverts to free Lite version.

Starting Price: $180

View Software

Exselo Desktop

Exselo

A tool that allows users to search, collaborate and share data in real time using encrypted peer-to-peer technology. Effectively search and find the information you want from files and emails on your computer, cloud stores and network. Quickly share your information with friends and colleagues, and securely communicate with them. The Exselo Desktop Free License enables powerful search, result refinement, secure peer-to-peer communication and collaboration functionality for an individual user. The Exselo Desktop Professional License extends the free license with more functionality and features for an individual user and ensures priority on any support request. The Exselo Desktop Enterprise License is for organizations where software is managed and controlled by administrators and Exselo Destop is to be used by multiple users.

Starting Price: $1.95/month/user

View Software

Lookeen

Axonic Informationssysteme

Your time is too valuable to waste on inefficient and ineffective search – use Lookeen for fast and effective full-text file and email search. The multiple award-winning professional desktop search solution finds all important information for you in record time. Whether searching in Microsoft® Outlook®, PST archives, on Exchange servers, Public folders, on the desktop, in the network or in virtual desktop environments: Lookeen finds every email, every document and every photo immediately, no matter where it’s saved. Lookeen is designed so that the load on your computer, network and Exchange Servers remains as low as possible. Thanks to various settings in the search tool, Lookeen indexing is fast and reliable on older Windows® systems too. The intuitive user interface makes using Lookeen child's play. Easily view your data in the search results list, the advanced filters and highlighting system means that your emails, documents and folders are one click away.

Starting Price: $69 one-time payment

View Software

Agent Ransack

Mythicsoft

Agent Ransack is a free file search tool for finding files on your PC or network drives. It has a Lite mode, which is free for both personal and commercial use but also a Professional mode that includes optional pay-for features. Found text is shown with highlighted keywords so you don’t need to waste time opening each file looking for the right information. Support for Perl compatible regular expressions. A ‘locked down’ version of Agent Ransack is available for environments where the end-user is not allowed to search their local PC. For corporate environments, we have a more ‘gentle’ branding of Agent Ransack called FileLocator Lite.

Starting Price: $59.95 one-time payment

View Software

Listary

With Listary you’ll never have to go through the tedious process of browsing through folders, looking for the right file names and hunting through Windows’ limited menus ever again. Listary puts smart search technology at your fingertips so you can keep working without dealing with cumbersome native Windows navigation. With a lightweight interface that doesn’t bog your system down and strain system resources, Listary puts Windows Explorer on steroids. Copy or move files to any folder from any folder with easy context menu commands. Quickly browse your recent app and file history to continue working where you left off. Create a favorites list of commonly used files and apps for fast access. Instantly find & launch programs with a quick keyboard command.

Starting Price: $19.95 one-time payment

View Software

UltraSearch

Desktop Search

Improve your workflow with our ultra-fast solution for convenient file search, UltraSearch Professional is available now! The must-have Windows Search alternative reduces your waiting time to an absolute minimum as it shows you the first results while you are still typing. Take advantage as you search for files not only on hard disks but also on network drives. Flexibly individualize your search with your own search parameters to make the process even faster and more comfortable. Benefit from UltraSearch Professional with its Ribbon surface, quick-access to convenience functions, PDF and Excel export, the Query Composer and many more exclusive features and let us maximize your user experience! The simple user interface provides fast and easy access, Windows integration and offers excellent performance for your file search. Use the efficient search syntax and optimize your search results by combining search attributes. The Query Composer will assist you.

Starting Price: $25.95 per year

View Software

Quick Search

Glarysoft

When you type any file name, subject or keywords into its search box, the results screen will display kinds of related files on that information in less than a second. At the same time, it will list a number of similar files you do not need. Quick Search offers a search filter to limit search range and narrow down the search results for higher working efficiency. On Quick Search's lighting quick interface, you will clearly see two major controls: the search box and the real-time displaying panel. An important aspect of managing computer files is rapidly locating documents and folders. When the built-in search that Windows comes with is not enough, a blazing fast solution is Quick Search.

Starting Price: $19.97 one-time payment

View Software

FileSeek

FileSeek is an easy-to-use file search app that includes advanced functionality for power users! Search through files using simple queries or regular expressions. You can even sync your search settings between computers. FileSeek uses multithreading technology to improve the speed of its searches, making it able to out-perform any Windows search. With no background search indexing, FileSeek will never affect the performance of your computer while closed. Improve your workload by saving your search criteria as a search profile. Save, load, or modify your most common searches to make your life easier. With FileSeek’s tabbed search interface, there is no longer any need to wait for a search to be complete before starting a new one. You can start a search in another tab without opening another window, keeping your taskbar neat and tidy. Use FileSeek’s query language or regular expressions to search for specific information inside files or folders.

Starting Price: $15 one-time payment

View Software

FileLocator Pro

Mythicsoft

Whether it’s a line of source code, an entry in a log file, a legal brief, or even just a Christmas letter to your family, FileLocator Pro helps you find things fast. Its unique features make it possible to dig out information in even the most obscure file formats. Our client list includes many high-profile organizations. Find out why so many people are switching to FileLocator Pro today! Includes syntax highlighting for easier reading of source code, supports most programming languages. Highly efficient search algorithms mean that you spend less time waiting for results. Indexes can be created for instant searching through GB of data. Documents, images, and source code can be reviewed quickly using unique data navigation functionality. Frequently used searches can be saved as favorites for fast loading. Search through emails, contacts, calendar items over multiple PST files in one go. Share your results with others using the printing and exporting features.

Starting Price: $44.95 one-time payment

View Software

XYplorer

XYplorer is a file manager for Windows. It features tabbed browsing, a powerful file search, a versatile preview, a highly customizable interface, optional dual pane, and a large array of unique ways to efficiently automate frequently recurring tasks. It’s fast, light, and portable. XYplorer is a portable file manager. It doesn’t require any installation, stores all configuration data in the application data folder, and running it doesn’t change your system or registry. Take it with you and start it from a USB stick. File management to go. XYplorer has been designed to make you faster. Numerous usability enhancements in an attractive interface help to streamline your workflow and increase your efficiency. You will definitely save a lot of time. You can fine-tune the app to look and behave exactly as you want it. This ranges from fonts and colors to custom toolbar buttons and even file icons and program associations. And every bit of it is fully portable.

Starting Price: $39.95 one-time payment

View Software

Wise Toys

WiseCleaner

As a set of utilities for greater productivity, Wise Toys has built-in a powerful local file search engine and many plugins, covering all aspects of life and learning, providing many conveniences and saving time for Windows users. Easily open the main window of Wise Toys at any time by using the global combinations of keys. The plugin is a collection of practical gadgets, saving your time & efforts, and helps you to increase your productivity within no time. A local file search engine that supports search plugins, installed programs, documents, pictures, videos, music, etc. An advanced tool to bring a revolutionary change in computer usability and turn the complex task into a simple way with less-efforts. Increase the efficiency of using Windows PC & laptop. Search is a local file search engine that supports search plugins, installed programs, documents, pictures, etc.

Starting Price: Free

View Software

SmartFinder

Serendipity S.r.l.

Find your documents immediately in one click! SmartFinder allows you to use an innovative way to search for your files with an experience similar to Google's search! With SmartFinder you have everything just a click away and in a single view! From the ability to open the first relevant files already while typing the words to be searched, to links with meta-data to directly filter the results, to viewing an extract of the document with the searched words highlighted or search by wildcards! Top features: + Search by filename, content and filter the search results by metadata (authors, keywords, publish date, ...) + Order by relevance + Thumbnail and highlighted search result, document excerpts + find duplicates file, empty file and more in few clicks!

Starting Price: $19.99 one time payment

View Software

Curiosity

Curiosity is a powerful search app that gives you one place to find all your files, emails, and apps. It eliminates the need for multiple searches, saving you time and increasing your productivity. With Curiosity, you can quickly find what you need, whether it's in a folder, email, or cloud app like Google Drive or Notion. It even searches inside files, images, and scans – and you can talk to your files, auto-reply to emails, ask questions, summarize meetings, and much more with the AI Assistant. The app also works as a launcher, so you can use a simple shortcut to open programs, join video meetings, search your clipboard history, or call up the AI Assistant. Fast and easy.

Starting Price: €3.99/month

View Software

Noggle

When documents are spread across your hard drive, the cloud, network folders, or even on the computer of a colleague, searching for the files you need can be a real headache. Noggle is a standalone desktop search and knowledge assistant application to provide fast and simple access to the information you need. Even if you thought you would never find a document again; Noggle will. Noggle provides an easy and fast way to quickly locate the exact documents you need, from wherever they’re located. Designed to find the relevant information on your PC and all connected network or cloud storage folders. Full text discovery, including image and photo search. Noggle is the only software providing you instant document recommendations on the fly. See material that is related or similar to the item you’re viewing to get your work done.

View Software

CSearcher

HNsoft

Searching computer files and folders is rather common for every PC user daily. Using standard Windows Explorer solution for this has many disadvantages, it's slow, uses lots of RAM and many times it does not find what we are looking for! CSearcher gives users a more advanced file searching tool alternative. CSearcher includes all features of Windows Explorer search and adds many unique features. Integration with Explorer menu for the seamless search of folders. Filter results, after finding all the results you want, you can dynamically filter results for faster finding of different items. Filter possible duplicate file (same name and size), can be confirmed with md5. Results can be Files AND/OR directories! Windows native DLL calls for better performance. Portable tool, can be installed and run from any folder, no installation required. One of the fastest non-indexing free File searchers.

View Software

SETI Finder

Cylab

Finding the exact document or record you need can be a time-consuming proposition. You might be responding to an RFP with a tight deadline and you’re having trouble finding the documents you need to pull your proposal together. Or, you might be an attorney preparing a case and finding the correct reference documents is a challenge. Or, you spend all day searching your HR or membership database, but if you make a data entry error, your software can’t find the record you’re looking for. SETI™ Finder is an intelligent tool that – in one interface – allows users to find documents on the desktop and network and records in your databases in seconds. Our fuzzy search capability is so accurate, even if you juxtapose letters or omit a number from a zip code, SETI™ still produces exact results. SETI™ can handle missing, extraneous, and incorrectly sequenced characters in both user-entered search strings as well as in the database.

View Software

Searchable

Stop wasting 20% of your workweek clicking through emails, chats, cloud and local storage for the files you need. Introducing Searchable.ai, one search for all your files. Unified search across local, cloud storage and apps. Google Docs, Microsoft Office, Slack, Dropbox, that one sticky note in that one Powerpoint, instantly search your hard drive and web apps in a single view. Precise results with instant previews. Searchable pulls up the exact page containing the information you need. No more opening random documents and skimming. Sometimes you’re not looking for a file, you need an answer that is somewhere in your files. In that case, just ask. For example, "What was our revenue projection last quarter?" or "When does our lease expire?" Searchable will find the answer. Searchable.ai is a unified document hub that allows users to quickly search and access work documents across multiple devices, email providers, cloud services (Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, etc.)

View Software

Duplicate & Same Files Searcher

Download Crew

Duplicate & Same Files Searcher is an advanced tool for locating and dealing with duplicate files. The program locates files with identical content only; unlike some similar tools, you can't compare files just on their names, dates or size. This makes Duplicate & Same Files Searcher relatively slow, as it must read and process every single file in your selected group. Fortunately, there are some ways to improve performance. You can direct the program to scan a particular folder tree only, to examine files of a particular type, to ignore others, to check only files of a defined size. There are some options you won't often see elsewhere. You can have the program check for (or ignore) differences in alternate data streams, to ignore different ID3 tags in MP3s, to skip symbolic links (or not). When the scan is complete, each set of duplicates is listed, along with their file names, paths, size, dates, even their number of fragments (whether they're fragmented or not).

View Software

DocFetcher Pro

DocFetcher Pro 1.15 has just been released. This is just a minor maintenance release with fixes for three bugs: Two crashes related to tar.gz and 7z archives, respectively, and one minor issue with the preview pane. For details, please see the changelog. There hasn’t been much activity on DocFetcher Pro lately, mainly because of the focus on the upcoming DocFetcher Pro Server. Another reason is that most bugs in DocFetcher Pro seem to have already been fixed. For those not in the know, DocFetcher Pro Server is a variant of DocFetcher Pro that is intended to be run as an indexing and search server, and that can be accessed by one or more clients remotely through the web browser. Regarding the release date of DocFetcher Pro Server, there’s bad news, unfortunately: It will likely not be ready by the end of 2021, as previously announced.

Starting Price: $40 one-time payment

View Software

Launchy

Launchy is a free cross-platform utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes! Launchy has just been released for Android in Winter 2021. It takes an entirely new spin on finding and starting your apps, so give it a try! A clean and fast interface to find and launch the app you're looking for. Forget grids of icons that are constantly changing. No more slow and clunky keyboard. Find your apps by name with our novel paddle system. Intelligently presents your apps in frequency and recency order. You can then type in a few keys of the program you are searching for and hit enter once it has been found. You can also make Launchy disappear again by hitting escape or alt+space.

View Software

QuikFynd

This software will enable you to quickly search, organize and share all of your files on your desktop and across your multiple cloud drives. You have valuable data stored on your computers and it is growing rapidly. You also have many files in cloud drives but bulk of your documents and pictures still remain on your computer. It is very difficult to know where all the files are and you could be spending your precious time in trying to find the right file. With QuikFynd, you can instantly find files on your computer, connected network drives, removable storage and across cloud drives. Beautifully designed and easy to use, QuikFynd is also very powerful. You can search by keywords in documents, objects in images and it even tags your documents automatically using machine learning.

Starting Price: $2.80 per month

View Software

Compare the Top Desktop Search Software for Windows as of November 2024

What is Desktop Search Software for Windows?

Crestadoro

X1 Search

Slik Safe

FileSearchEX

Everything

Copernic Desktop Search

TextSeek

Directory Report

MightyGrep

eSearch Pro

Exselo Desktop

Lookeen

Agent Ransack

Listary

UltraSearch

Quick Search

FileSeek

FileLocator Pro

XYplorer

Wise Toys

SmartFinder

Curiosity

Noggle

CSearcher

SETI Finder

Searchable

Duplicate & Same Files Searcher

DocFetcher Pro

Launchy

QuikFynd