this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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I search for files, and it never seems to find them. Plus it only does one drive at a time, and not just searches my external drives. Any suggestions?

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[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago

find . -iname "searchword"

[–] jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)
[–] QuantumTickler@reddthat.com 4 points 3 weeks ago
[–] passenger@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Does this search file content or just path names?

[–] jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 weeks ago

I don't know, tbh, I only use it for filename searches.

[–] QuantumTickler@reddthat.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

This worked awesome, so thank you!

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)
[–] QuantumTickler@reddthat.com 2 points 3 weeks ago
[–] n0p1lls@piefed.zip 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I use the fd (or fdfind in Debian) tool to search my files. I think it's faster and easier to remember.

fd in Github

[–] QuantumTickler@reddthat.com 2 points 3 weeks ago
[–] passenger@sopuli.xyz 6 points 3 weeks ago

For finding files by name, I use the locate command in terminal

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 5 points 3 weeks ago

For a long time I was a mlocate guy.

updatedb

locate files

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

tree -if and grep are another way to go.

or, I've also seen some use du as part of their file search strategy. heh.

strange ways.

[–] ken@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

du

show them ncdu next time

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 1 points 2 weeks ago

ncdu

that's fine if wanting a tui, like for its intended purpose, rather than something grepable/awkable/sortable/cutable/headable/tailable/etc. like better suited to file search

[–] somegeek@programming.dev 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If you're a GUI guy, catfish is good. If you're a term guy, fzf, rg, fd are very fast and powerful. I search for files in / (meaning EVERYTHING) and tge results are there in less than 10 seconds.

This blog post has some example usages, read the entries for fzf, rg and fd.

https://alavi.me/blog/cool-cli-tui/#fd

[–] QuantumTickler@reddthat.com 1 points 3 weeks ago
[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I gave up on search utlities of GUIs after having the same problem with dolphin (don't know what it uses as a backend, maybe ksearch?)

[–] Encephalotrocity@feddit.online 1 points 3 weeks ago

grep is life