Everything

Everything, from the Australian developer voidtools, replaces the built-in Windows file search with an index of its own. Instead of walking directories on demand, it reads the master file table of each NTFS volume and stores the names it finds, which lets a full index of a typical system be built in a few seconds. From then on the program watches the file system for changes, so renamed, created and deleted files are reflected in results without a rescan. Typing in the search box narrows the list character by character, and the memory footprint stays small because only names and paths are stored, not file contents.

Queries can be plain text, wildcards, regular expressions or a filter syntax that restricts results by extension, folder, size or date. Results can be sorted, saved as bookmarks or exported to file lists. Beyond the main window, voidtools distributes a command line client, an SDK for calling the index from other programs, and optional HTTP and FTP server plugins that expose the index over a network. Portable builds run without installation, and installers exist for 32-bit, 64-bit and ARM systems from Windows XP through Windows 11. A content search mode is available but is much slower, since it has to open files rather than consult the index.

The program suits anyone who works with a large number of files and finds the built-in search too slow or too vague: developers, system administrators, photographers and anyone maintaining a media library. It is less useful if the goal is to search inside documents, since indexing covers names only, and full-text tools handle that job better. Indexing NTFS volumes requires administrator rights or the bundled background service, and network shares or non-NTFS drives fall back to slower folder monitoring rather than the fast index.