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Tallukka
Asked: 2020-02-09 16:13:03 +0800 CST

Is there universal search/"search everything" function for Ubuntu?

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Is there any chances to get similar search function for Ubuntu as in Windows 7 where it searches everything within the system and even inside text files? I don't know if it's called "universal search" or something. The one under the start menu in Windows 7. For instance if I search "holiday" it comes up with all my text documents that has such word or file name and any application which may have that word in it's title.

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2 Answers

  1. Not too sure about it being within the GUI of Ubuntu, but on the command line you have a few options:

    locate <name>

    This will give you results based upon a file or directory name pretty much anywhere in the system.

    find <Start Location> -name <Name>

    e.g. "find / -name httpd.conf" would search the root directory recursively to find httpd.conf.

    There's also grep that can be used to search through files recursively, this can be a little slow though:

    grep -ir "Text to search for" /*

    The line above with search for a case insensitive match (-i) and recursively (-r) from the last option provided (/*) which is the root directory and a wildcard, for the text between the quotes.

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  2. There is an indexing framework Tracker that is aimed for global desktop search on the Gnome desktop, the desktop used by the default Ubuntu version. The Tracker daemon and its miners search all files and their contents, and index this in a database to allow quick search from clients such as the Activities Overview.

    Tracker is only enabled by default in Ubuntu 19.10 and onwards. In previous versions, you can install tracker to enable it.

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