Tools better than Windows Search - what are you using?

[liquidsound]

I have about 9 million files and Everything finds whatever I need using all kinds of criteria “under a second” as I type!
A monster.

[Fannon]

Yes, Everything is really good.

I don't understand what Windows search does. It's awful, slow and still takes background indexing which sometimes takes up quite some CPU and from time to time even hangs up. So I usually just remove everything except start menu from the index and use Everything for everything else.

[lfm]

I ran Everything 1.4.1 a bit and tested.

Pro vs UltraSearch
- highlight of search word in filename

Con vs Ultrasearch
- have fewer headers for list, like no Length which is convenient on mp4 etc
- combine a search two words with AND it showed much less result
- 3 files vs US showed 19 files
- and I checked that relevant

EDIT: my bad, AND was not a reserved word in Everything so was taken literally. Just doing two words with space gave same result.

Both ran as admin, having direct access to file system.

So Everything does not show everything - pun intended.
I have an SSD 512 GB, on two partitions as C: and D:

Everything seems good, but cannot be trusted just as windows search.

Syntax for Ultrasearch
https://manuals.jam-software.com/ultras ... yntax.html

Both support RegEx(Regular Expressions) though for that syntax.
But have not used so far.

[liquidsound]

I ran Everything 1.4.1 a bit and tested.

Pro vs UltraSearch
- highlight of search word in filename

Con vs Ultrasearch
- have fewer headers for list, like no Length which is convenient on mp4 etc
- combine a search two words with AND it showed much less result
- 3 files vs US showed 19 files
- and I checked that relevant

Both ran as admin, having direct access to file system.

So Everything does not show everything - pun intended.
I have an SSD 512 GB, on two partitions as C: and D:

Everything seems good, but cannot be trusted just as windows search.

Did you use the Advanced search (it's a long window to scroll which I missed the first few time I used it, forgetting to scroll down to all the options) and also added the volumes and other stuff, etc. in the Options?

[lfm]

Did you use the Advanced search (it's a long window to scroll which I missed the first few time I used it, forgetting to scroll down to all the options) and also added the volumes and other stuff, etc. in the Options?

There is certainly more than meet the eye at first glance in Everything.
Both my C and D volume were included.

So commented a correction above, I was assuming AND(capital) was a reserved word but taken literally as part of filename.

But did a test to see if a part of path, part of foldername then and a word and found no way to do that in Everything.

EDIT: match path option and it searches path too with all words

In Ultrasearch I did
path: part of foldername AND name: something in filename
which works.

[liquidsound]

Does Ultrasearch allows Copy or Moving to folder with Advanced options?
I could not find it on the webpage...
Also in the Help menu you'll find Search Syntax and Regex Syntax lists of... syntax

Ultrasearch has a pleasant UI.

I haven't go too deep yet with Everything, so, you may find more shortcomings than I'm aware of.

[lfm]

Does Ultrasearch allows Copy or Moving to folder with Advanced options?

Under Operations there is something about file operations, but in paid Pro version.

I also felt a need to from a search move some files to another folder and such.

Goto help and a help file opens, and search index for file operations.
A dialog is shown on a link and looks pretty complete to me of anything I want to do.
- zip files, move, copy
- log operations you did to log file
- create undo script for operation
- execute an application with files as parameters

[BONES]

I f**king hated Win7 so I never really used it. It had the absolute, all-time worst Start experience. I pretty much went straight from XP to Win8 (still my favourite version of Windows).

[lfm]

Microsoft has gone astray with what they are doing to gui and entire windows.
- all settings used to be on Control Panel
- with windows 10 they started a separate thingy called Settings
- every update they moved more stuff to Settings instead
- you really have to look around to find the dialogs like for Appearance and performance
- gui on windows 11 is pretty much a white or black sheet with no guides for eye to navigate
- so much information on each screen that scare you off basically
- and now the windows search too having to look for 3rd party stuff
- and they go all politicly correct and say they are helping us save carbon emissions
- but insert guilt into increasing performance of computer since increase carbon emissions giving reminders of that
- oh, dear, oh dear....Bill Gates where are thy, have thy abandoned me.....

[Ex Machina]

I wish I could also use it on the Mac but... Windows Land is endless

Spotlight in macOS just gets better and better. Windows search has always sucked. How can Microsoft not get this right? I realize Bing is maybe not the best search engine. But it's light years beyond what is available in Windows.

[Ex Machina]

Win11's Start is so shithouse that it is too hard to find things, so I use search there. I've tried to get used to Win 11's Start but it is completely hopeless.

Windows 11 Start Menu is such a massive improvement over the dead on arrival Windows Phone-inspired "live tiles" design featured in Windows 8 and 10. Thank god Stardock came out with the "Start8" and "Start10" utilities which allow you to use a version of the classic Windows 7 Start Menu instead of those distracting, useless, space hogging tiles.

It took them forever. But Microsoft finally got their shit together in Windows 11 from a design perspective. Someone from Apple must have explained to them that simple is almost always better than complex when it comes to user interfaces.

Of course, Windows search still can't hold a candle to Spotlight search in macOS. Perhaps Microsoft should hire more Apple engineers who can school the rest of the Windows development team on how to do things the right way.

[sjm]

Of course, Windows search still can't hold a candle to Spotlight search in macOS. Perhaps Microsoft should hire more Apple engineers who can school the rest of the Windows development team on how to do things the right way.

While the search in Windows is terrible, I think both teams would benefit from looking at best practices wherever they occur, and adopting those. It's amazing how many simple design principles are overlooked by both. Much of MacOS is generations behind Windows in terms of usability.

What MS really need to get out of the habit of doing - and this has been a persistent problem for 30 years now - is fixing things that aren't broken. My dad, who is pushing 80 now, has great trouble with the latest versions of Windows simply because they keep changing things for the sake of changing them, not in order to improve them. Things just move for no real reason, and he can't find them. It frustrates him no end, and he's getting old enough that learning new things and remembering them 3 months later when he next needs to use that knowledge is getting challenging. As was mentioned above, there's really no good reason to constantly reinvent the Control Panel and Settings options to move the same options to different places in each new release. How is that delivering value for anyone?

[Karbon L. Forms]

I ran Everything 1.4.1 a bit and tested.

Pro vs UltraSearch
- highlight of search word in filename

Con vs Ultrasearch
- have fewer headers for list, like no Length which is convenient on mp4 etc
- combine a search two words with AND it showed much less result
- 3 files vs US showed 19 files
- and I checked that relevant

EDIT: my bad, AND was not a reserved word in Everything so was taken literally. Just doing two words with space gave same result.

Both ran as admin, having direct access to file system.

So Everything does not show everything - pun intended.
I have an SSD 512 GB, on two partitions as C: and D:

Everything seems good, but cannot be trusted just as windows search.

Syntax for Ultrasearch
https://manuals.jam-software.com/ultras ... yntax.html

Both support RegEx(Regular Expressions) though for that syntax.
But have not used so far.

Use 1.5a. Many improvements.

https://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9787

[Ex Machina]

As was mentioned above, there's really no good reason to constantly reinvent the Control Panel and Settings options to move the same options to different places in each new release. How is that delivering value for anyone?

Well, the old Control Panel looks totally out of place in the modern Windows design aesthetic. What boggles my mind is that Microsoft has had eight (?) years to migrate the old Control Panel options to the new Settings app. And they still haven't completed the transition! So users have to hop back and forth between two totally different panels to find the setting they need to adjust.

I do think the Settings app will ultimately be easier to use and match the look and feel of the rest of the operating system. But crikey, Microsoft should have completed this years and years ago as part of the Windows 8 release.

[BONES]

Windows 11 Start Menu is such a massive improvement over the dead on arrival Windows Phone-inspired "live tiles" design featured in Windows 8 and 10.

How so? It's f**king useless. If you want to, you can make Win 10 exactly like Win 11 but with Win 11, you are stuck with something that is completely non-customisible so if it doesn't work for you, you're f**ked.

You can only get 24 app icons on it at a time and who the f**k only needs 24 pinned icons on their Start menu? On my last Win 10 machine, I had 73 icons pinned - all the main applications I use, plus all the little manager apps that NI and everyone else uses these days, all the standalone synths I might want to fire up and have a play with and utilities like Erae Lab, Roli Dashboard and the control panel for my audio devices. Then I had all my graphics-oriented stuff, which is another dozen or so icons/tiles.

Everything could be organised into categories with headings and by using a combination of large and small tiles, you could build a Start that was far, far easier to navigate. You could make it any size and shape you wanted. I opted for tall and narrow, to optimise the "All Apps" list so I could see more things that weren't pinned, instead of the 11 items that are visible on the too short Win 11 Start.

I'd also point out that the small tile size is smaller than a desktop icon, so the suggestion that it was made for touch is absolute bullshit.

Thank god Stardock came out with the "Start8" and "Start10" utilities which allow you to use a version of the classic Windows 7 Start Menu instead of those distracting, useless, space hogging tiles.

Win 7's Start was the absolute worst incarnation they ever came up with. The reason they gave it such a radical overhaul in Win 8 was that the user data they had collected from literally billions of user keystrokes showed that use of Start in Win 7 had dropped by as much as 80% for some tasks, compared to XP, so clearly people did not find it at all useful.

It took them forever. But Microsoft finally got their shit together in Windows 11 from a design perspective. Someone from Apple must have explained to them that simple is almost always better than complex when it comes to user interfaces.

What someone from Apple might have told them is that users hate choice and your life as a developer will be much easier if you don't give them any. Because that's what Win 11's Start has done, it's taken away any choice as to how you organise your computer. We'd be better off ignoring it altogether and just putting icons on the desktop for everything. At least that way they can be organised into useful groupings that are easy to navigate. Instead, they've turned it into something as useless as a phone's home screen. They given over to the lowest common denominator and f**k everyone else.

Of course, Windows search still can't hold a candle to Spotlight search in macOS.

Unless you want to search a network drive, in which case macOS is totally useless. At work, I think that was the best thing about moving from Mac to PC, as all the files we use and everything we create lives on servers, nothing lives on our workstations except the software we use.

Search seems to be something Apple don't put any effort into. Siri used to use Microsoft's Bing search engine, later switching to Google.

As was mentioned above, there's really no good reason to constantly reinvent the Control Panel and Settings options to move the same options to different places in each new release. How is that delivering value for anyone?

I think there are very good reasons for getting rid of Control Panel and moving to Settings. It's a much slicker way of doing it. The problem is they have been at it for almost a decade now and still haven't managed to move everything over.

What was utterly useless was changing the names of things in Control Panel in Vista so that you couldn't find anything any more. e.g. "Add/Remove Programs" was the main thing most people would have used in CP and it was the first item in the list, until they changed it to "Programs & Features" in Vista, which hid it in the middle of nowhere in the alphabetical list, so you couldn't find it any more. Even the new name was less descriptive of its function so there was no good reason for doing it at all. But Microsoft have been shit at this stuff forever. They are basically completely f**king useless but at least they keep trying things.