XLN Desktop Search

It can be quite challenging to find files of interest on a crowded computer, but Windows comes with a search tool to help in this regard. Even so, you might not be fond of the way you need to set up filters, or find it too complicated. Luckily, there are various third-party alternatives which can help, such as XLN Desktop Search.

One advantage in particular is that the application is portable, so you can easily take it for a spin just as download is finished. Moreover, you have the liberty of storing it on a thumb drive in case you want to use it on other computers. System registry entries are not modified, so the health status remains intact as well.

The application wants to make it easy to identify files on your computer, but also to set up the necessary filters. The interface design is kept to a minimum, making accommodation a walk in the park. An upper toolbar holds several fields which need to be filled with appropriate filters, while a large section displays all gathered results.

It comes with several preset locations to look in. it’s possible to add your own, but you need to manually paste the path because there’s no browse dialog in this regard. However, these are saved for later use. Apart from the location field, you also need to specify a text string to be found in the name, which can be set to match entirely.

In case you want to narrow down results, it’s possible to configure a few more filters. A dedicated field helps you look for a specific extension, and whether or not to find folders as well. Detection speed is decent, with time displayed in the status bar. Results can be opened directly, or just have them viewed in Explorer.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that XLN Desktop Search does manage to offer a decent alternative to the Windows search tool. However, it’s not exactly fitted with a great range of filters to configure, and might not be able to detect items if you don’t know much about them.