What are the alternatives to OS X's Spotlight?

Question

One of the things I like best when using OS X is the Spotlight tool. You can click a magnifying glass in the corner, and search for apps, files, anything. Windows 7's Start Menu search tool is similar. Does Ubuntu have anything like this?

Gnome Do has some similarities, but it's really more about doing things than searching for things. Something with a panel applet like Spotlight would be ideal.

Solution 1

Unity Dash

From 11.04 to 17.04 (Unity), Ubuntu had an even better solution built in: The Dash!

With the dash you can do all kind of cool stuff, such as:

• Search through your files
• Find installed and available applications
• Run commands
• There will be many more features in the future, as the dash is extendible through so called "lenses". These will allow you, for example, search Ask Ubuntu right from your desktop.

Just hit Super to open it in 11.04!

For more information, check out this link.

Solution 2

Cardapio

Cardapio is exactly what I was looking for. You'll have to install TrackerDownload tracker, start it, then enable the "File Search" plugin from Cardapio.

Solution 3

Deskbar

Deskbar is probably the closest application, as far as the user interface goes, to spotlight.

Click here to install.

It has a number of backends, allowing you to search for files, launch applications, search the web, and a lot more.

Solution 4

Beagle or Tracker for Ubuntu. For Kubuntu, Strigi.

Solution 5

Tracker seems to fit your needs, and 0.8 and beyond is overall awesome.

You can install it with sudo apt-get install tracker. Once installed run from Dash with "Search and indexing" or from CLI tracker-preferences to adjust preferences., and issue tracker control -s to start indexing, or wait for it to index your files when your system is idle. tracker-needle is the graphical search tool, and there are various CLI tools that you can discover by typing tracker- and hitting the Tab key twice. Also run just tracker to see a list of available commands.

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Comments

[Admin]

@Ingo: Awesome! I will make that the accepted answer once 11.04 comes out. Until then, I think answers for previous versions of Ubuntu will be more useful to visitors.

[Admin]

I think you'll be happy whith recoll lens: askubuntu.com/questions/38772/…. It's great.

[Admin]

@Closevoters Why would this question be considered as too-broad? It is asking for a specific software which sits in the panel and allows one to search for files, applications and everything else. There is a specific task laid out in the question which should be functionally similar to Spotlight. If this question is too-broad in your opinion, then consider all the question tagged as software-recommendation to be too-broad as well.

[Admin]

Moreover the question is completely applicable as of today, since not all the desktop environments are Unity which come with dash built-in... So, people using other desktop environments would find this question to be very valuable.

[Matthew]

Thanks! Beagle appears to be dead, and is not in Maverick: lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-mono/2010-May/023656.html . I installed Tracker, but I'm still looking around for an lightweight search-as-you-type front-end for it, preferably as a panel applet. Any suggestions?

[RusGraf]

What does it use to index files? In the past I've always associated this with Beagle.

[red.clover]

Unfortunately, if you want "search-as-you-type" you need Beagle as a backend to index the files. Without Beagle, it launches gnome-search-tool.

[Matthew]

This is probably the closest to what I was looking for, so I'll accept it as the answer, but it's not really good enough for me. Like andrewsomething said, it's not really "search-as-you-type" (Beagle is defunct), and the whole thing feels kind of clunky. But it's the closest out of the answers suggested here.

[NightwishFan]

I like tracker, very through and efficient. It also integrates with the optional deskbar applet (which resembles mac os x spotlight). You could also try beagle search as well.

[Dante Ashton]

Beagle developed stopped some time ago, if I'm not mistaken. Tracker is really the only proper tool nowdays.

[Matthew]

@NightwishFan: I thought only Beagle worked with the deskbar applet. Are you sure it works with Tracker, too?

[Matthew]

What icon theme are your monochrome panel icons from? They're purrty.

[red.clover]

@Matthew See here: askubuntu.com/questions/6967/reset-the-icons-after-upgrade/…

[NightwishFan]

Tracker and Beagle do the same thing.

[jaminday]

Great, this sounds like what I was looking for, although I've hit a few snags so far - didn't start indexing automatically (left it overnight), so I had to manually start it with 'tracker-control -s' this morning. Also I set the notification icon to appear when indexing but it doesn't. Otherwise is looking good so I'll give it a try.

[Matthew]

Update: Cardapio provides a good front-end for Tracker (among other things). See the accepted answer.

[NightwishFan]

My mistake, seems beagle does only work with Deskbar now. I know for a fact it used to though.

[MarkovCh1]

Aside from the beagle indexing dependency problem explained by @andrewsomething, this app is only a gnome panel widget. This means that the package provides no executable or a way to integrate with the Unity panel!

[red.clover]

Of course when I provided this answer, that wasn't the case. In fact the question even specifically mentions that a panel applet was the preferred solution.

[Coc]

Cardapio is awesome. Recommended.

[MarkovCh1]

The real question is: Why is no popular GUI software (like synapse and Unity) taking advantage of file indexing? It's already present (for years) in Windows and OS X.

[Mitch]

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes.

[MacThePenguin]

The OP was asking for software alternatives to Spotlight. I mentioned the name of a software I think might be a valid alternative, and I also provided a link. What else should I include in my answer?

[Mitch]

A brief description of the software, citing your resources, just in case the link dies in the future.

[Eliah Kagan]

@MacThePenguin See this Meta.SO post for more information about what to include in link-based answers.

[jerrymouse]

It is super slow. Not even closer to Mac OS X spotlight

[Linh]

Did you try 13.04? It got much better, at least on my system. That's not to say it isn't improvable, though.

[scruss]

Seems to have lost the ability to search in file in 16.04

[Raffi Khatchadourian]

Can you use it on the command line like mdfind?

[Pablo Bianchi]

Last update of Gnome Do was on 2014