# Everything by voidtools

78 Hacker News commenters recommended Everything by voidtools and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A free Windows app that finds files and folders by name almost instantly, which people say beats Windows Search. The most common caveat is heavy memory use, since it keeps its index in RAM.

## Why people recommend it

- Finds files by name instantly (7 comments): "using the Everything app (on hotkey) to quickly search my Drive files immediately as I type" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989346)) "used it to find a file while Windows Search was still saying 'Working on it...'" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46938616)) "It finds filenames instantly, by searching the NTFS structures." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375351))
- Long-time staple on Windows PCs (6 comments): "I used this a lot when I was doing Windows stuff professionally, and I always really liked it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46940002)) "Everything Search is one of the first tools I install on any new Windows PC." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46801043)) "I switched to Everything for search a while ago and haven’t looked back" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49711141))
- Advanced queries and custom options (3 comments): "The tool is truly amazing. Both for simple usage, and the advanced queries that it accepts." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46938986)) "an amazing search program that allows you to create custom categories and the like" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47231718)) "especially Dark Mode and support for Properties/Tags/xattr/ADS/XMP" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46938894))
- Free with no adware (3 comments): "Everything Search is free, powerful and fast, and thankfully, unlike some other famous tools (CCleaner), it is not adware, spyware or malware." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46820488)) "there is a free (and probably open source) tool for everything" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47547774)) "a free third-party tool can instantly find any file anywhere" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46939484))

## What people warn about

- Heavy memory use (3 comments): "Everything is heavy. 400MB on my current machine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47500670)) "It is a HUGE memory hog so buyer beware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46939126)) "Halfway because it is fast, but it's fast because it keeps the index entirely within RAM" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46939159))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Cardinal file search for macOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cardinal.md): 7 recommend
- [Recoll](https://hackerapproved.com/p/recoll.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Everything by voidtools", https://hackerapproved.com/p/everything/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).