SB.log(s)

Everything - Search anything all at once

 Software  676  4 mins

Everything is a simple yet extremely fast and versatile search system.
So powerful that it has literally changed the way I explore my files.

The only downside: it’s Windows only.

Installation

Download Everything from the official site: https://www.voidtools.com/

For the TL;DR people here, just know that it’s fast, lightweight and reliable, then jump to Examples of searches down below.
The others, stay with me ;)

Blazing fast

The real power of Everything is the speed.
It’s almost instantaneous. I remember having a shock on my first use.
How has it not become Windows default search engine ?! One of this world mysteries for sure…

Personal tips

Search in path

When you don’t remember the exact name of what we are searching, but we have a vague idea of where it is stored.
That when it’s handy to search also within the path of the file (I use that as default).
Menu Search > Search in Path (Ctrl + U to toggle) This way elements of the path are just more keywords to help you.

Change results sorting

I find usefull to sort result by data modified instead of names, with the mouse on the panel right-click > Sort.

Customize options

I also like to tweak some preferences (Tools > Options):

  • Under General > Results I like to enable the handy options to “Open path with double-click on the path column”

  • Under General > Keyboard I have set my “Show windows hotkey” to Win + Shift + Z, for quick search popup.

Filters… filters everywhere

There are precise filtering.
You can either use the advanced search or directly use dedicated keywords.

Filter by file type

Want to see only videos files? Enter video: isolated in search bar.

Here is the list of file type keywords:

  • audio: Audio files.
  • zip: Compressed files.
  • doc: Document files.
  • exe: Executable files.
  • pic: Picture files.
  • video: Video files.

You have also:

  • file: Match files only.
  • folder: Match folders only

Note: I often filter file search by extensions: ext:jpg

Search in a folder

It’s very common to search in a specific directory.
You just have to paste the path between quotes: "path/to/folder" my_search_terms.
Or if Everything is installed, right-click on directory, search with Everything

Filter by date

  • da:<date> or dateaccessed:<date> Search for files and folders with the specified date accessed.
  • dc:<date> or datecreated:<date> Search for files and folders with the specified date created.
  • dm:<date> or datemodified:<date> Search for files and folders with the specified date modified.

<date> is very flexible, some example:

Let’s say we search relative to first February 2023:

  • dm:2023-02-01 Exactly the at that date
  • dm:>2023-02-01 After the date
  • dm:<=2023-02-01 Before (but including the day with added =)
  • dm:2023-02-01..2023-01-10 from first to tenth of February (double dot means “range”)

But you can also have words that are self-explanatory:

  • dm:today
  • dm:thisweek
  • dm:lastweek
  • dm:thismonth
  • …

To see a lot more search syntax, Go to Help > Search syntax, there is a lot more here.

Examples of searches

tutorial set !old ext:blend size:>20mb

Searching something that:

  • match the word “tutorial” and the word “set” (can be searched in path as mentionned above)
  • does NOT contain the word “old” (exclude somethingby adding ! before)
  • is a “blend” file (since I specify an extension, no need to add filter file:)
  • is bigger than 20 Megabytes (for size you have to specify reference size KB, MB, GB, else number is in bytes)

video: size:>1gb dc:past2months

Searching:

  • a video file
  • bigger than 1 GigeByte
  • was created within the 2 previous months

Search in content

You can also search in file content, but this is slow, because it needs to read file. So better have the smaller possible searching scope. Example with one of my bookmarked search:

"G:\PROG\SB_Blender_addons" ext:py content:bl_info

This shows python files within my personal dev folder that contain a specific word, here “bl_info” for the sake of the example.

And so on…

It can also help cleanning duplicates !
Just enter dupe: in search bar.

I’m stopping here to avoid the TL;DR effect, but believe me, I just scratched the surface

Have a nice search 🔍

See Also: