Recoll
Ranked 3 of 3 file search tools by recommenders
Free desktop search engine that indexes text across many folders and file types quickly and runs on modest hardware.
Free desktop search engine that indexes text across many folders and file types quickly and runs on modest hardware.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast indexing, light on resources
“recoll indexed the whole thing in an afternoon”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “Usenet rewind archive search engine” “it's far smaller and it runs on a potato”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Survival LLM: AI assistant and emergency library that runs on your own computer”
Other file search tools people recommend
The two most recommended other file search tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Everything by voidtools | 78 | 4 | 95% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Cardinal file search for macOS | 7 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| RecollThis page | 6 | 1 | 86% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it's far smaller and it runs on a potato”
“notmuch beat recoll for me on the mbox split”
“recoll indexed the whole thing in an afternoon”
“Recoll's indexer can extract text from just about anything I throw at it”
“What I haven't done yet is trying to plug SearX to a local Recoll instance”
“works great, especially for people who tend to save notes in many different text files in many different folders”
“Recoll is my desktop search engine software of choice”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.