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Ask HN: Organizing and Searching Personal Documents

by ystad on 5/31/22, 12:33 PM with 5 comments

I have my documents (pdfs, text files, source code, markdown, google docs etc.) strewn across local drives, Google drive and GitHub.

I struggle to search for my pdfs, Google docs and sometimes source code (although grep works decent)

What do you use to help organize and search your personal content?

by 97-109-107 on 5/31/22, 5:29 PM
A few approaches combined make for a very "shallow" search whenever I need something
- Johnny Decimal (https://johnnydecimal.com/) to structure folders
- agkozak/zsh-z: Jump quickly to directories that you have visited "frecently." A native Zsh port of z.sh with added features. (https://github.com/agkozak/zsh-z)
- catfish for searching (https://docs.xfce.org/apps/catfish/start)
The 2nd and 3rd component have many alternatives across platforms.
by runjake on 5/31/22, 6:46 PM
Alfred/Spotlight on macOS.
Albert and GNOME Search or whatever, on Linux.
Windows Search on Windows. (Windows Search doesn't work very well for me, but it's something.)
https://www.alfredapp.com/
https://albertlauncher.github.io/
https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/files-search....
by zigzag312 on 5/31/22, 4:41 PM
On Windows I use:
- Voidtools Everything for search by name/metadata.
- DocFetcher (open-source version) for search by file contents.
Everything is excellent, but DocFetcher could be improved.
by anon2020dot00 on 6/1/22, 5:26 PM
“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.” – Tom Bodett
by tacostakohashi on 5/31/22, 3:58 PM
I use directories to organize my files.