Everything is a

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

desktop search Desktop search tools search within a user's own computer files as opposed to searching the Internet. These tools are designed to find information on the user's PC, including web browser history, e-mail archives, text documents, sound files, images ...

utility for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

that can rapidly find files and folders by name. While the

binaries A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document fil ...

are licensed under a

permissive license A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free-software license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how the software can be used, modified, and redistributed, ...

, it is not

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

Overview

When Everything first runs, it creates an index of the names of every file and folder on all

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

and

ReFS Resilient File System (ReFS), codenamed "Protogon", is a Microsoft proprietary file system introduced with Windows Server 2012 with the intent of becoming the "next generation" file system after NTFS. ReFS was designed to overcome problems tha ...

volumes on the system from file metadata, in the case of NTFS from the NTFS Master File Table. By default, all mounted NTFS and ReFS volumes are indexed. Once created, the index is continually updated by the application; in the case of NTFS the updates are fetched from the NTFS change journal. Specific folders on any file system can also be added to the index, but the indexing of folders not using NTFS or ReFS will be slow, although searching using the completed index will not be. Regardless of the file system used on the indexed drives and folders, Everything searches its index for file names matching a user search expression, which may be a fragment of the target file name or a

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or ...

, displaying intermediate and immediate results as the search term is entered. Since Everything does not index content and, for NTFS drives, relies only on the NTFS change journal to filter file updates, the only file system activity it requires on NTFS drives is updating its index, and it uses very little memory and processor time to provide its service when only indexing NTFS and ReFS drives.

Take Command Console Take Command Console (TCC), formerly known as ''4DOS for Windows NT'' (''4NT''), is a command-line interpreter by JP Software, designed as a substitute for the default command interpreter in Microsoft Windows, CMD.EXE. Take Command was the name ...

incorporates the internal command everything to allow command line access to the program.

Security concerns

Because Everything requires access to the NTFS change journal, it must run with administrator privileges, either in a privileged user account or as a

Windows service In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manager ...

. As a Windows service it can expose search functionality to accounts without administrator privileges. However, Everything does not filter search results by client privileges before displaying them, so that every user can see every file on a volume. Furthermore opening the file or running an executable will launch the file with its own credentials rather than with the user's own credentials. Although there may be a way to prevent privilege escalation when opening a file, there is no obvious remedy to prevent one user from listing the private files in another user's account.

Development status

No updates of Everything were issued from November 2009 to January 2013. Added to as required. Since then the program has received many updates.

Similar alternatives

These alternative and also free search engines use the same technique of reading the NTFS index directly: * NTFS-Search and the more recent SwiftSearch – both open source * UltraSearch – freeware

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Everything (Software) Desktop search engines Freeware Utilities for Windows