Everything Search Skill

Platform: Windows Only

This skill allows you to search for files and folders on the local machine using the high-performance “Everything” search engine.

Prerequisites

1. “Everything” Service: The main application (Everything.exe) must be installed and running in the background.
2. Command-line Interface (es.exe):
   • This skill requires the standalone Command-line Interface (CLI) tool.
   • Download es.exe from voidtools.com.
   • Add the directory containing es.exe to your system PATH environment variable.
   • Verify installation by running es.exe -version in a terminal.

When to Use

• Finding files when you only know part of the name.
• Locating files modified recently (e.g., “files changed today”).
• Finding large files (e.g., “files larger than 1GB”).
• Searching for specific file types (e.g., “all python scripts”).
• Finding files containing specific text (content search).

Usage

1. Basic Search

Use the scripts/search.js script to perform searches.

// Example: Find all PDF files
// Run with node
node scripts/search.js *.pdf

2. Advanced Options

The script supports several flags matching es.exe capabilities:

• --limit (-n): Limit number of results (default 100).
• --sort (-s): Sort order (e.g., size, dm, date-created).
• --regex (-r): Enable Regular Expressions.
• --match-path (-p): Match full path instead of just filename.
• --case (-i): Case sensitive match.

# Example: Find top 10 largest video files
node scripts/search.js video: --sort size --limit 10

# Example: Find files modified today
node scripts/search.js dm:today

Search Syntax

“Everything” uses a powerful query syntax.

See references/syntax.md for a comprehensive cheat sheet of operators, wildcards, and functions.

Quick Examples

• foo bar : Files with “foo” AND “bar”.
• *.jpg | *.png : JPG OR PNG images.
• !*.tmp : NOT .tmp files.
• size:>50mb : Files larger than 50MB.
• dm:lastweek : Modified last week.
• content:"search term" : Search inside files (slow).