Help me find a Google Desktop replacement
March 19, 2012 3:05 PM Subscribe
Please recommend for me a new search tool to replace Google Desktop. Ideally I want something that searches the full text of all files, that covers everything on my hard drive plus Google Docs. I want it to be fast, offer results in context, and have a simple interface that offers 'sort by relevance' and 'sort by date.' I use Ubuntu.
When Google Desktop came out in 2004, it made my life immeasurably better. Previously, I'd been trying to manually organize all my files, which I was pretty bad at and hated doing. Google Desktop made it possible for me to search everything on my hard drive, fast, without needing to spend any time maintaining a structured system of files. Later I started using Google Docs, which kind of broke my system a bit, because Google Docs was the only thing I used that Google Desktop didn't index. Now Google Desktop's been discontinued, which means I am going to need to find something else.
Currently I'm using Google Desktop plus experimenting with Recoll. Recoll would superficially seem to meet my needs, but it doesn't index Google Docs or GMail, I'm not sure it's fully indexing all the files of the types it claims to encompass, and the ordering of results thus far seems bizarre.
A slightly broader question: what the heck are people using to search the cloud, and are they succeeding in keeping on top of everything?? I feel like my stuff is increasingly fragmented all over the place: it's making me crazy :-(
When Google Desktop came out in 2004, it made my life immeasurably better. Previously, I'd been trying to manually organize all my files, which I was pretty bad at and hated doing. Google Desktop made it possible for me to search everything on my hard drive, fast, without needing to spend any time maintaining a structured system of files. Later I started using Google Docs, which kind of broke my system a bit, because Google Docs was the only thing I used that Google Desktop didn't index. Now Google Desktop's been discontinued, which means I am going to need to find something else.
Currently I'm using Google Desktop plus experimenting with Recoll. Recoll would superficially seem to meet my needs, but it doesn't index Google Docs or GMail, I'm not sure it's fully indexing all the files of the types it claims to encompass, and the ordering of results thus far seems bizarre.
A slightly broader question: what the heck are people using to search the cloud, and are they succeeding in keeping on top of everything?? I feel like my stuff is increasingly fragmented all over the place: it's making me crazy :-(
In answer to your second question, I use mostly (90% of the time) Google Docs, which are easy to search, and for other documents (Word, PDF) I rely on what I send as attachments in Gmail. It's sad, but I create so much content on a monthly basis, and collaborate with so many people, that it doesn't make sense to rely too much on local documents anymore.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:38 PM on March 19, 2012
posted by KokuRyu at 3:38 PM on March 19, 2012
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posted by KokuRyu at 3:36 PM on March 19, 2012 [1 favorite]