Track down files and folders instantly
‘Work smarter, not harder’ advocate Nick Peers reveals how to use a tool to transform the way you search for files and folders on your PC.
FSEARCH
Credit: http://cboxdoerfer.github.io/fsearch
OUR EXPERT
Nick Peers has thousands of files scattered across multiple hard drives. FSearch may just make some of them accessible again.
The ability to search your hard drive for files and folders is a critical part of any OS. Ubuntu’s file search exists within the Files tool itself, but it’s very basic. You type all or part of a keyword and the currently selected folder or drive is searched, with any matching results displayed – after a short pause.
Eliminating that pause and widening the search to cover more of your storage requires choosing a different search tool – one that’s able to build an index of your files and folders that updates as changes are made, and which provides the search tool with the ability to return results instantaneously. But that’s not all a good search tool should offer. What happens if you only remember part of a name, or aren’t sure what certain parts of the filename are?
One such tool is FSearch (https://cboxdoerfer.github. io/fsearch). It delivers results in the blink of an eye, and supports a wide range of search tools, from support for wildcards and RegEx expressions that don’t require precise search terms, to filters and sort tools to help narrow results further when required.