The Best Free Windows App of All Time

If I had to choose a number one most useful free Windows program that everyone should use, easily I would go with a tool called "Everything" search. It's one that I've used for over a decade, but somehow never made a video about. And even if you do know about it, I guarantee I'm going to go over some useful features that you didn't know about. And if you're wondering how this is any

better than the regular Windows Search, I'll just show you. Let's open the Everything app, and I want you to notice something. It shows a huge list of files, right? What if I told you that this is literally every single file on my computer, all five million of them, that I can scroll through with zero lag. Even when I change the column sorting, there's no delay. And let's try searching

for a specific file, like Test.txt. And notice that literally with every single letter I type, the entire list is updated instantly. And I can immediately see files anywhere on my computer that contains the string "Test.txt". This doesn't even scratch the surface of the features, by the way.

In a minute, I'll show you how to do more advanced searches, all equally instant. It's amazing. But

just for the sake of comparison, let's first compare it to regular Windows Search. I'll make

it really easy. It just needs to find the Test.txt file right in my Documents library. So I'll open up This PC, enter that... Yeah, I literally have no idea what in God's name is wrong with Windows, but it literally just sat there for minutes, not finding it. Even if I help it out by going just

to the top level of the drive it's on, it slowly starts showing some results, but not even the ones I'm looking for. And eventually it takes nearly 30 seconds to find the one in my documents. And

for those of you wondering, yes, the Documents folder is already indexed. It should already know about that file. So God forbid you search for a file across your whole computer. Anyway,

let's move on before I lose my composure. And by the way, I'm ThioJoe, I make all sorts of computer and technology tip videos. Let's get into it. Alright so where do you get the Everything app? The site for it is called VoidTools.com and you'll see that there is a current version of 1.4,

app? The site for it is called VoidTools.com and you'll see that there is a current version of 1.4, but there's actually a more recent one, 1.5 alpha. And that is actually the one I would recommend, even though it's the alpha version, he's been working on it for multiple years now, it's pretty polished. And it has a lot more features like dark mode and tabs and other stuff. You can find the

polished. And it has a lot more features like dark mode and tabs and other stuff. You can find the alpha version by going to the "In Development" link on the main page. However, the version on this page is not usually the latest alpha version. You can find that in the forums where he posts the latest update builds and there's a pin thread for the alpha. And you can see here, the latest

actual alpha build is build 1400, but on the main site, it just shows 1396. So you want to go to the forum post to get the actual latest version. And then here you can also see the changes in each build. Alright so now let's go over how to actually use the app, starting off with the

each build. Alright so now let's go over how to actually use the app, starting off with the general stuff and then some more advanced stuff. For general searching, when you type something in, it defaults to searching file or folder names. And for multiple terms that are separated by spaces, it's only going to show results that match them all. It's basically an AND operation. And also the

order does not matter. So searching "settings" and "test" is going to find any files and folders that has both of those strings, like even this one, "TestSettings", because the order doesn't matter, and it has both. If you need to search a phrase exactly including spaces, you can just put quotes around it too. Another thing to know is if you put a file path or folder path in the search box,

that has the effect of filtering for only files or folders whose paths match that, even if it's just partial. So if you want to search just within a directory, you just put that path in there,

partial. So if you want to search just within a directory, you just put that path in there, but be sure to use quotes if there's spaces in it. For more advanced searching, especially if you're just getting started with it, the easiest way is to use the Advanced Search window. That way

you don't have to remember the syntax. And there's all sorts of options for stuff about filtering the file name, the contents of the file, the size, date ranges, even the file name length. And you

can even use regex if you want to get advanced. Or instead of the advanced search window, you can manually use the different operators. Some common ones are the vertical bar for an OR operation, like if it matches any of these things. The exclamation point is a NOT operator. So if

I search "test" and then exclamation mark "bad", it's going to return files that have test in it, but not the word bad. And the asterisk can be used for a wildcard. So for example, *.txt is going to return files ending in .txt. Though in this case for file extension, you can actually use the special "ext" filter. I'll get to those next though. So let's go over some of those common

filters, I believe they're called functions, and you can tell these because they have a colon at the end. And depending on the function, usually if you add text after the function colon, it'll do something. Some good ones to know are the "folder" and "file" functions. So if you just put that anywhere in the search term, it's going to only include folders or files. And you can even

do something like this with the OR operator to return files that have this name in it or folders with this name in it, stuff like that. Again, there's the ext extension function. I showed you that one before for finding files with a certain extension. Another really useful one is the "path" function. This is only going to return files and folders that have whatever string in its path,

function. This is only going to return files and folders that have whatever string in its path, not as the final folder / file name. For example, if I'm searching for a certain file that I know has the word "settings" in it, and also I know that it's in one of the Adobe apps folders, but I'm not sure which, I could just do this. So it searches for files with "settings" in it,

but only where the path has Adobe in it somewhere. So that's going to include any of the relevant Adobe directories, like in Program Files, AppData, and exclude anything outside of those. Next, this

one I use all the time, and it's the "content" function. This searches for content within the files themselves. For example, maybe I want to reuse some code in a C# file I wrote at some

files themselves. For example, maybe I want to reuse some code in a C# file I wrote at some point that has a certain class having to do with system tray icons. But I can't remember exactly which project I was working on when I wrote that. Well, I could do a search like this to filter just for files that end in the C# extension, and then "content:systemtray", because I think that's

kind of what it was called, and it's going to return just files that have that in it. Now this

is obviously going to take a little bit longer because it has to actually manually search through the contents. So you'll want to have it narrowed down as much by the file name as possible,

the contents. So you'll want to have it narrowed down as much by the file name as possible, and that way it won't have as much to search through. In this case, it still really did not take long at all. It defaults to so-called UTF-8 encoding, if you know what that is. If you don't, it's not really something you have to worry about. Otherwise, I will mention that there

are other encodings you can search, like UTF-16, which is what you would probably use if you need to search through binary files, for example. Next, another good one to know is the "case" function.

This one makes the search case sensitive. By default, the searches are not case sensitive, so I could do something like this if I wanted to just search this specific test word as case sensitive and the rest not. There's also the "nocase" one, but this one is not usually necessary because it defaults to no case sensitive anyway, though you could combine these if you ever needed to. So if

you wanted to search for something that has both "test" case sensitive, but the word "good", not case sensitive, you could do something like this. Some other useful things to know when using these function filters, if you want to use multiple of them, like chain them together, you can actually just do this, put them one after the other. So for example, if I only want to search files,

not folders, with a case sensitive name, I could just do this. And the order doesn't seem to matter, at least in this case. So this works too. Also, if you want to use one string for multiple different function filters without having to keep writing it, you can do that too. So for example, you could use this syntax with the greater than and less than sign around them to group them and

then a vertical bar between. And that way, if it matches either UTF-16 content with whatever text or UTF-8 content, whatever text, it'll return either of those. But what's really powerful is you can actually search for any metadata property with these. For my example, let's just narrow it down to image file formats. And then to see all the available properties, let's look at the different

columns we can add. And you can do that by right clicking the column headers and then just Add Column. And you can see just how many columns you can add for basically all the different properties

Column. And you can see just how many columns you can add for basically all the different properties for different file types. And you can even search for them by name. So I'm going to look for the "program name" property, and this is a built-in Windows property. Keep in mind when you search for it, it filters by whatever is selected on the left. And since the Windows built-in properties

are technically a separate group, you want to select that or else it won't show up. Anyway,

once we add whatever property we want, we can then right click that column and hit "Search For", and then "program name" or whatever it's called. And it's going to automatically add a filter for whatever that property is. Now, if you just leave it like this without any text next to it, it's just going to filter for files that have any kind of value for that property, but you can further

filter for a specific value of the property by putting text next to it. This one again, is going to take longer than a straight file name search because it has to check each one. So you'll again, want to filter it as much as you can initially. That's why I just filtered it for images. There's

also plenty of other interesting function filters that I won't have time to go over, but a couple maybe less useful, but interesting ones are "distinct" and "unique". For distinct,

how that works is if multiple files in the results have the same value for whatever selected property, it's only going to show one of them. Now, the unique one is subtly different.

So unlike distinct, where if multiple files have the same name, it would only show one of them, unique won't show any of them. Alright now let's go over some more general features that are really good to know. For example, you can exclude entire directories so that it'll never return searches within that. That's really good for directories that have a huge number of files and you know

within that. That's really good for directories that have a huge number of files and you know you're never going to look for anything in there. Another good one to know is the ability to save column arrangements and searches as Bookmarks. So for example, I have a bookmark if I want to look for any folders specifically that contain files of a certain extension or type. So like

this will only show me folders that have MP4 files in it. And I also have it saved to show a couple of different columns like this one, the "child occurrence count", which is the count of MP4 files just directly in that folder, or the "descendant file count", which is the number of MP4 files in that folder or any subfolders. And for another example, I have one that I just

have called "Default Columns" if I want to revert to it. Now, differently from bookmarks, there's another way to use sort of pre-made filters. If you go to Search > Organize Filters. And any

filters you create in here will show up in this dropdown list next to the search bar. However,

this is different from bookmarks because it applies these filters behind the scenes. So

it doesn't add the text to your actual search bar, so it doesn't clutter it up. So for example, I have one of these called "No Noisy Paths", where I exclude a bunch of directories that have a ton of duplicate Windows files and stuff for like the windows sandbox. And this is different from fully excluding it because if I do ever happen to want to search in those files and folders, then I can

just switch away from that filter. And then you can also set the default filter in this dropdown by going to the Settings, Home, and then Filter. So I have the No Noisy Paths one as my default, and you could also set the default columns here. So for example, I just have it set to the last used ones. Now taking a look more at the settings, there's definitely good ones to know about. For

used ones. Now taking a look more at the settings, there's definitely good ones to know about. For

example, under Indexes, this allows you to have it store extra information about each file. So

it is quicker to search for metadata. It does say it takes up more space per file, but it's really not much. For example, I have over 5 million files and nearly all of the options checked,

not much. For example, I have over 5 million files and nearly all of the options checked, and it only takes up 500 megabytes for the entire index. The "Enable Journal" option is pretty neat too. This basically stores different file system actions like file or folder deletions, renames

too. This basically stores different file system actions like file or folder deletions, renames and moves. And then you can see them through the Index menu, and then Index Journal. So if

and moves. And then you can see them through the Index menu, and then Index Journal. So if

you're not sure if some program just deleted some file, you're not sure where it went and you can't find it in the recycle bin, you can look for it in there, it should show. It wouldn't let you recover it, but at least you would know what happened. And the larger max journal size you have set, the more events it can store. For example, I have it set to a hundred megabytes and it only goes

back a few hours, but that's also going to depend on how much background stuff you have going on.

Another one I would recommend enabling is if you go into the Advanced settings and then look for one called "statusbar_view", I would set this to "true". And that way it will show a toggle at the bottom right to easily select between the list view or thumbnail view. Like if you're searching for images specifically. Now, another feature that I'll at least point out, but it's

kind of super advanced is being able to do custom formulas and custom columns. For example, you can define this "A" variable as the size, and then you can format it like this so it shows as gigabytes, and then add that variable to a column. And that way you have your own column that only shows the file size in terms of gigabytes. And you can do that for all sorts of different properties. It's

not really something I've played around with, but there is a whole forum thread with all the various functions you can use in these variables. And there's a ton of them. And it actually takes a lot of inspiration from the ones available in Microsoft Excel. So you can see there's a lot you can do with it. And overall, this is really just scratching the surface. With the 1.5 alpha,

there's so many more things that are not actually included in the main documentation on the main page, that's just for 1.4. Again, if you look in the forum, there's different threads for the features specific to the alpha with updated documentation. It's good to at least know what it's capable of. So I'd love to know if you never heard about this, are you going to start using

it? Or maybe you did know about it, but didn't know about all this extra stuff it could do.

it? Or maybe you did know about it, but didn't know about all this extra stuff it could do.

We could talk about that down in the comments. If you enjoyed the video, you know what to do.

Absolutely annihilate the like button by launching it into orbit and then following it up with an ICBM missile to destroy it. Now next up, if you want to keep watching, here's a video I made of another pretty useful tool that makes Windows Explorer better. I made it myself. I'll put that link right there and click on. And if you want to subscribe, I try to make videos about twice a

week, so it should be worth it. So thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.