Search in Windows is THE indicator of how poorly Microsoft has maintained their core operating system, IMO.
What could be more significant over the last 20 years than "search", and where does there exist a worst implementation of it in a major piece of software?
Everything really puts a spotlight on this with how simple and effective it is.
It drives me bonkers that when I hit the Windows key and type "bash", the first suggestion is always "Git Bash", which I have never used, when I truly want it to just run "bash" from WSL, which is not only a perfect text match, but actually gets used.
But not only is "bash" not the first result, it's not even the second, third, or fourth. Between the "Best match" of "Git Bash" and the actual "bash" command is 10 web search results that I have zero interest in and have never had an interest in.
I just don't get it. "bash" is an exact string match and always the result I choose. How is "Git Bash" still considered the "Best match"?
It's the opposite for me. I don't use bash.exe on my Windows machine and it is the first match when I type "bash". "Git Bash" is the second best match. I have no other results. Windows 10 Home Edition 10.0.19045.
I seriously don’t understand how searching for a file in windows takes so long and yields such crappy results? What abomination must there be under the hood for it to be this consistently bad for all of these years? Microsoft devs chime in if you have any insight.
Somehow i don't even think it is enshittification, because their search has been bad forever. On all previous versions of windows server even.
ok ok, maybe it would slow things down to index shared drives? well how do you fuck up simple search on the LOCAL computer too???? I have to use powershell to do searching "gci -recurse" is built in alias for get-childitem. And it wasn't too many more lines of code to start searching the contents of word and excel files. (although this does take a lot longer, at least it works)
I agree that searching on Windows sucks but I guess there is a trade-off to be made. You can use very abstract APIs that will work for all kinds of file systems, whether a local disks, a DVD, a USB connected phone, or a network drive, but it will be slow and limited because you can only rely on the lowest common denominator. On the other end of the spectrum you can build highly specialized functionality that can be fast and take advantage of all the features of the target file system, maybe even accessing the medium at the block level, but it will only work for a specific target. So I can at least see how you can end up with what we have.
> On the other end of the spectrum you can build highly specialized functionality that can be fast and take advantage of all the features of the target file system, maybe even accessing the medium at the block level [...]
This is how WizTree works and why it's significantly faster than WinDirStat.
WinDirStat uses the system APIs to crawl the file system tree which results in lots of random reads and drive cache thrashing. WizTree directly reads and parses the file system data, making it an order of magnitude (Even 2+ orders of magnitude on magnetic drives!) faster. It also uncovers lots of hidden system files.
I don't get it. Everything is so good. You make it sound like this is because it doesn't cover some edge cases, but why can't the search just be about as good as Everything for everything but those edge cases?
I asked Claude why Windows just can't match Everything, and this was what it spit out:
> Microsoft faces challenges in improving Windows Search to match Everything's performance:
> Backwards compatibility: They need to maintain compatibility with older Windows versions and existing features.
> Broader scope: Windows Search is designed to search not just filenames but also file contents, emails, and other data types, making it inherently more complex.
> System integration: Changing core Windows components can have wide-ranging effects on the operating system and third-party software.
I remember the days when the point of tech work was to eat the complexity on your side, so your users wouldn't have to. Alas, the dominant mindset today is that "dev time is expensive", while users' lives are free to waste.
I do not disagree with you, but having the news and weather forecast in the start menu is seemingly a more important feature then having a good search functionality, what can we do? And maybe that even makes sense, maybe we are just not the target audience that brings in the money, or maybe they really just make stupid decisions, that is hard to tell from the outside in an objective manner.
Lol, Windows search doesn't suck because of the filesystems it supports. I can only assume you're a Linux or Mac user who has never used the Windows menu before, as quite literally anyone who has seen it would not come to such a conclusion. I envy you, so I will not taint your view of reality with an actual description of why it is so universally hated.
I agree that MS built-in search sucks... but so do the default MacOS and Linux search implementations.
I've said for a long time that Everything should be incorporated into core Windows, until then, at least it is available on Windows. Other OSes don't have an equivalent.
What could be more significant over the last 20 years than "search", and where does there exist a worst implementation of it in a major piece of software?
Everything really puts a spotlight on this with how simple and effective it is.