DESKTOP SEARCH TOOL Recoll
Version: 1.32 Web: www. lesbonscomptes.com/recoll
Most file managers have a find function to help you search for files. However, these lack powerful filtering mechanisms that you get with Recoll, which essentially adds a local search engine to your desktop or even your local network.
Recoll is a graphical wrapper for Xapian, which does all the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Thanks to Xapian,
Recoll can analyse and index text inside all the most common document formats, including those that are embedded inside others. For instance, Recoll will have no issues looking inside a text file inside a compressed archive, sent to you as an email attachment.
In most cases, you can preview or open the files found with your search by just clicking on them inside the Recoll window.
Recoll is available in the official repositories of some distros, such as Fedora.
$ sudo dnf install recoll
Ubuntu users can pull Recoll from a PPA:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:recoll-backports/ recoll-1.15-on $ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install recoll
On first launch Recoll will build its index. You can go with the default options to begin with, but know that the tool offers an extensive set of options which makes it possible to configure the index. Among other things, you may define which file types should be indexed and the default language.
To run a search, enter the search term in the top text box, and click the Search button.
You can quickly filter the results using the radio buttons, such as media, presentation, spreadsheet, and more, at the top of the interface. For a more specific search, head to Tools>Advanced Search to fine-tune the search parameters as well as result filtering. If you run the same search frequently, you can save your search query using the File>Save last query option.