labs.llc File Search The local searcher
Light — the edition you are reading
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The local searcher · your disk, asked properly

Your files.
Found properly.

Point the searcher at any folder and it indexes every file inside — then answer-time is instant: six ways of matching a name, a path search, type and size and date filters, a grep through the text files with the matching line shown, duplicate detection three ways, and the results as a table, as cards, or as a wall of thumbnails.

All of it happens in this browser, on your machine, using the File System Access API. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is phoned home, and closing the tab forgets everything except the filters you chose to save. The page cannot see a byte you did not point it at.

Open the searcher Read the privacy answer

—files indexed

—on the shelf

—kinds of file

0bytes uploaded, ever

The searcher

Point it at a folder. Ask it anything.

The index is built once, when you choose the folder; every filter below re-asks it instantly. Chrome and Edge give the full recursive API; other browsers fall back to a directory picker that works the same way from there on.

The searcher

Drop a folder here — it is walked in full Files work too. A dropped folder goes around the picker entirely, which is the way in when Chrome refuses one.

Chrome refuses to open some folders through the picker — the whole home folder and anything it considers system territory — and says so in its own dialog (“contains system files”). That is the browser’s blocklist, not a fault here. Three ways past it: pick a subfolder instead, drop the folder on the zone above, or use the broad picker — both of the last two take any folder.

Name
Path
Type
Size
Modified — browsers only expose last-modified
Content — text files under 2 MB
Exclude & depth — applied while indexing
node_modules, .git and friends are skipped on their own.
Extra
Saved filters — kept in this browser

No folder chosen yet

A searcher, not a search box.

Choose a folder and every file in it joins an index that lives only in this tab. From there the whole bench works instantly:

  • Six name modes — contains, starts, ends, exact, regex, fuzzy.
  • Content grep — search inside the text files, matching line shown.
  • Duplicates — three definitions of “the same file”, marked in place.
  • Bulk actions — select across pages, copy paths, export CSV or JSON, or download a ZIP this page writes by hand.
  • Previews — images with zoom, video, audio, PDF, text, and a hex dump for everything else.

Keyboard: / aims the name search, ↓↑ (or jk) walk the rows, Space selects, Enter previews, c copies the selected paths, Esc closes and clears. In the content grep, foo -bar means foo without bar.

The bench

Three moves, honestly made.

01

Find

Six name modes, a path search, extensions and categories, size and date windows, exclude patterns, a depth limit, and a duplicate detector with three definitions of “the same”. Every filter narrows the same index, instantly.

02

Read

Grep through the text files with the matching line shown under each hit. Preview anything in place — images with zoom, video and audio players, PDFs, code, and a hex dump of the first 4 KB when a file is binary and says nothing else.

03

Act

Select across pages and act on the lot: copy the paths, export the table as CSV or JSON, or download the files themselves as a ZIP — one this page writes by its own hand, no library, so the bytes go straight from your disk to your download.

Privacy

Nothing leaves. That is the design.

The searcher makes no network request with your data in it — not to labs.llc, not to anyone. The index lives in this tab’s memory and dies with it. The two things that persist do so in your own browser and nowhere else: filter presets you choose to save, and — if you pin a folder — the folder’s handle in IndexedDB, so a later visit can ask your permission to re-open it. The browser re-asks that permission every time; the page could not silently read the folder again even if it wanted to.

About

A searcher, brought home.

The Local File Searcher, brought home to labs.llc and rebuilt on the paper system in both editions. Everything the standalone build could do survives — the six name modes, the content grep, the duplicate detector, the three views, the bulk bench, the previews, the presets, the pinned folder — and the toolchain got lighter on the way: the ZIP is written by the page itself and the previews need no highlighting library. Best in Chrome or Edge, where the File System Access API is whole; a fallback picker covers the rest.