DocFetcher is described as 'Open Source desktop search application: It allows you to search the contents of files on your computer. — You can think of it as Google for your local files. The application runs on Windows, Linux and macOS, and is made available under the Eclipse Public License' and is a very popular File Search utility in the file management category. There are more than 100 alternatives to DocFetcher for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD and Flathub apps. The best DocFetcher alternative is Recoll, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like DocFetcher are Listary, FSearch, Agent Ransack and UltraSearch.
This package is a personal full text search package which is based on a very strong backend (Xapian), for which it provides an easy to use and feature-rich interface.
It is not free for Windows.
It actually is a full text index. The other choices are file finders
Listary is a revolutionary search utility for Windows that makes finding your files and launching applications blazing fast, for casual and power users alike!.
Listary does not support full text search
Only supports windows operating system.
FSearch is a fast file search utility for GNU/Linux operating systems, inspired by Everything Search Engine. It's written in C and based on GTK+3.
Agent Ransack is a tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files Agent Ransack also displays the text found. Users can then quickly browse the results without having to separately open each file!
It does index the text content of all your files so that you can search by particular strings inside your files.
Free version doesn't support indexing, file content search takes a LONG time.
Slow file content search compared to DocFetcher. Fast file name search. Supports adding multiple search paths.
Quickly fuzzy search system, hidden, or dotfiles using keyboard navigation, then preview, copy paths, batch rename, or run custom scripts. Supports exclusion rules, minimal UI, Quick Filters, and power user features for efficient macOS file management.
grepWin is a simple search and replace tool which can use PCRE regular expressions to search for strings of text within files. grepWin adds an entry to the shell context menu to easily search selected folders.
Catfish is a handy file searching tool for Linux and Unix. The interface is intentionally lightweight and simple, using only GTK+3. You can configure it to your needs by using several command line options.
Ever had a folder full of PDF files, where you knew, somewhere in there, is what you're looking for. But you did not know in which file. So you had to search each of them at a time…
More modern and easier to install since it is on flathub. At this date it does not create an index so each search will browse all the files one by one but the dev is planning on solving that.
AnyTXT Searcher is a powerful local data full-text search engine, just like a local disk Google search engine. It is your ideal desktop search tool.
feels alot like "Everything" search except also searches within File contents
AI-powered assistant centralizing all data by searching files, folders, and cloud apps, creating custom automations, interacting with emails, calendars, and web, offering document summarization, organization, and content generation tools.
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The installation in macOS is anything but simple. The default installer creates an application that cannot process PDF files, a lot of manual steps are needed to make the app functional.