FSearch
Instant file search by name. Type a few letters and matching files appear straight away.
Our verdict
FSearch is the closest thing Linux has to Everything on Windows. The author wrote it because nothing on Linux matched Everything for speed, and the result behaves the same way. You type part of a name and the list narrows instantly.
The catch is scope. Everything on Windows reads the NTFS file record and knows about every file the moment it changes. FSearch builds its own index from the folders you point it at, so you set that up once and refresh it when you have added a lot of files. For a home folder full of photos and documents that takes seconds.
Install it from your distribution's app store rather than Flathub where you can. The Flathub package is put together by someone other than the author and a few features are missing from it.
What's good
- Results appear as you type, the way Everything does on Windows
- Lets you choose which folders go in the index and which are left out
- Supports wildcards and regular expressions for people who want them
- Free with no account and no paid tier
What to know first
- The window looks plain and dated next to the rest of a modern Linux desktop
- The Flathub build is not published by the author and is missing some features, so the version in your distribution's own app store is the better one
- It searches file and folder names only, not the words inside your documents
- The index has to be built before the first search, and very large drives take a while
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (GPL-2.0)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak), Built-in app store
Windows apps it can replace
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