Why is on-device search terrible?

Question

My search experience across a lot of products is, to put it bluntly, garbage. Apple Mail, Gmail App on Android, Finder search, Windows Explorer search, MacOs Spotlight... rarely find what I'm looking for.Why is it so bad? Are indexes / Io ops really that expensive?

pjot · Accepted Answer

On the other hand, search in Photos on iPhone is _scary_ good.Searching for &ldquo;baseball&rdquo; will return pictures of a baseball, a team playing baseball, photos that were taken at the location of a baseball stadium, AND photos that literally have the word baseball in text somewhere within the photo.

MH15 · Answer

iOS spotlight used to work well- now there's a three second delay at times while it fetches the internet-enabled features. All I want is it to find my apps for me!

f1refly · Answer

Try `find / -iname "foo" 2>/dev/null`, works every time. Also can take quite some time.

runjake · Answer

Data point: Spotlight and the Gmail app searches work great for me. What issues are you seeing?
Have you tried rebuilding your Spotlight index? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716
Have you tried rebuilding your Mail.app index? https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/rebuild-mailboxes-mlhlp...

wrldos · Answer

I don&rsquo;t use search. I carefully put things where I will find them.

abrookewood · Answer

On Windows, please try Everything from Void Tools. It is insanely quick: https://www.voidtools.com/en-au/support/everything/

simne · Answer

This has same roots as why far manager (norton commander clone) does not popular on MacOs.
- For fast search need to use indexes, which tend to be few times larger than data. Far on MacOs show 4-5 versions of same file ("timemachine" version system).
I think this is just psychology question, people don't like when appear those strange files.

specialist · Answer

Overcast's local text search is also turrible. It very much regularly impedes my usage.

yuppie_scum · Answer

If you&rsquo;ve ever ran a Mongo cluster you know that yes, search/indexing is expensive

NoThisIsMe · Answer

It's pretty great on GNOME tbh. It worked well on Windows 7 too.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos · Answer

Its deliberate to dissuade you from keeping anything on your device. Upload it to the cloud and let google, apple, microsoft, and the government search it for you.However yes i/o is time consuming and you can see that when programs update their indexes.

Why is on-device search terrible?

My search experience across a lot of products is, to put it bluntly, garbage. Apple Mail, Gmail App on Android, Finder search, Windows Explorer search, MacOs Spotlight... rarely find what I'm looking for.
Why is it so bad? Are indexes / Io ops really that expensive?

On the other hand, search in Photos on iPhone is _scary_ good.
Searching for “baseball” will return pictures of a baseball, a team playing baseball, photos that were taken at the location of a baseball stadium, AND photos that literally have the word baseball in text somewhere within the photo.

iOS spotlight used to work well- now there's a three second delay at times while it fetches the internet-enabled features. All I want is it to find my apps for me!

Try `find / -iname "foo" 2>/dev/null`, works every time. Also can take quite some time.

Data point: Spotlight and the Gmail app searches work great for me. What issues are you seeing?
Have you tried rebuilding your Spotlight index? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716
Have you tried rebuilding your Mail.app index? https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/rebuild-mailboxes-mlhlp...

I don’t use search. I carefully put things where I will find them.

On Windows, please try Everything from Void Tools. It is insanely quick: https://www.voidtools.com/en-au/support/everything/

Overcast's local text search is also turrible. It very much regularly impedes my usage.

If you’ve ever ran a Mongo cluster you know that yes, search/indexing is expensive

It's pretty great on GNOME tbh. It worked well on Windows 7 too.

Its deliberate to dissuade you from keeping anything on your device. Upload it to the cloud and let google, apple, microsoft, and the government search it for you.
However yes i/o is time consuming and you can see that when programs update their indexes.

Why is on-device search terrible?

My search experience across a lot of products is, to put it bluntly, garbage. Apple Mail, Gmail App on Android, Finder search, Windows Explorer search, MacOs Spotlight... rarely find what I'm looking for.Why is it so bad? Are indexes / Io ops really that expensive?

On the other hand, search in Photos on iPhone is _scary_ good.Searching for “baseball” will return pictures of a baseball, a team playing baseball, photos that were taken at the location of a baseball stadium, AND photos that literally have the word baseball in text somewhere within the photo.

iOS spotlight used to work well- now there's a three second delay at times while it fetches the internet-enabled features. All I want is it to find my apps for me!

Try `find / -iname "foo" 2>/dev/null`, works every time. Also can take quite some time.

Data point: Spotlight and the Gmail app searches work great for me. What issues are you seeing?Have you tried rebuilding your Spotlight index? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716Have you tried rebuilding your Mail.app index? https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/rebuild-mailboxes-mlhlp...

I don’t use search. I carefully put things where I will find them.

On Windows, please try Everything from Void Tools. It is insanely quick: https://www.voidtools.com/en-au/support/everything/

Overcast's local text search is also turrible. It very much regularly impedes my usage.

If you’ve ever ran a Mongo cluster you know that yes, search/indexing is expensive

It's pretty great on GNOME tbh. It worked well on Windows 7 too.

Its deliberate to dissuade you from keeping anything on your device. Upload it to the cloud and let google, apple, microsoft, and the government search it for you.However yes i/o is time consuming and you can see that when programs update their indexes.

My search experience across a lot of products is, to put it bluntly, garbage. Apple Mail, Gmail App on Android, Finder search, Windows Explorer search, MacOs Spotlight... rarely find what I'm looking for.
Why is it so bad? Are indexes / Io ops really that expensive?

On the other hand, search in Photos on iPhone is _scary_ good.
Searching for “baseball” will return pictures of a baseball, a team playing baseball, photos that were taken at the location of a baseball stadium, AND photos that literally have the word baseball in text somewhere within the photo.

Data point: Spotlight and the Gmail app searches work great for me. What issues are you seeing?
Have you tried rebuilding your Spotlight index? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201716
Have you tried rebuilding your Mail.app index? https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/rebuild-mailboxes-mlhlp...

Its deliberate to dissuade you from keeping anything on your device. Upload it to the cloud and let google, apple, microsoft, and the government search it for you.
However yes i/o is time consuming and you can see that when programs update their indexes.