What's new in WinFindr 1.6
Dec 3, 2023
- New feature: New, more modern results listing UI component.
- New feature: WinFindr can now search for epub format ebooks based on their content.
- New feature: You can now filter and sort the results list with much more options.
- New feature: Added support for searching for files and folders from Windows network drives.
- New feature: You can now ignore (and therefore instantly remove) items from the results list by using the Right Click menu.
- New feature: You can now define the search depth. For example, if you want to search for files only from C:Temp and one level of sub directories, you can now do that by entering "1" as the search depth.
- New feature: Added support for searching for files based on their metadata. For example, you can search mp3 music files based on their tag data such as album name.
- New feature: You can now choose whether you want files to be searched based on their name. Disabling this option allows you to search files only based on their metadata or content. Previously, it was possible to search for files based on their content, but the same search would also always match files whose name contained the search terms.
- Improvement: Registry entry search results now also show the value of the registry entry.
- Improvement: Adding new ignore items now update the results list immediately. For example, if you add C:Windows to your ignore list, all C:Windows search results are immediately removed from the search results without the need to run the search again.
- Improvement: The search results now show the type of the found file results, similarly how the type of the found registry entries is shown.
- Improvement: The Ignore input now also supports wildcards. Previously, only the search terms supported wildcards.
- Improvement: Clicking the Search Sources text will now show the directory browsing dialog. Previously, you had to move the mouse cursor to the very right side of the window and click the ... button.
- Improvement: Clicking the Search For text will now automatically select all the search data types.
- Improvement: WinFindr Pro users can now reset their license information in the About tab for example in case they want to change the name of the license owner.
- Fix: Searching for files with a specific kind of wildcard did not work, as the search never found any results.
- Fix: Maximizing the program window could cause it to go over the Windows task bar.
New in WinFindr 1.5 (Oct 19, 2023)
- New feature: Added a search option to ignore derived forms of English words. When enabled, a search term "invoice" will match a filename "Invoicing.pdf" and search term "portugal" will match a filename "Portuguese Cakes.doc"
- Improvement: Greatly improved the searching inside document files. The support for all document file formats and versions is not yet complete, but it's much better.
- Improvement: If searching only for filesystem data, the status bar no longer mentions that zero registry keys were searched, or vice versa.
- Improvement: If the screen size changes while the program is running, for example, if you have multiple monitors and you move the app from one monitor to another, the program now ensures the window size and position make sense.
- Improvement: The new default double click mode is to open a file and in case the result is not a file, open its path.
- Improvement: If you are using the standard window frame in Windows 11, the program window should now use the Windows 11 style rounded corners.
- Improvement: The program can now better handle cases of large number of results (i.e. 10k+).
New in WinFindr 1.4 (Sep 28, 2023)
- New feature: Added a search option to ignore special characters between words. If enabled, a search term "cute cat" will match files such as "cute-cat.jpg" and "cute_cat.jpg"
- New feature: Added a search option to ignore accent characters. If enabled, a search term "café" will match "cafes.pdf".
- Improvement: Greatly improved the speed of the new search inside documents feature.
- Improvement: WinFindr can now find more document and PDF file formats based on their content.
- Improvement: You can now enter input paths inside quotation marks, which is handy when copying paths from Windows 11 file explorer.
- Improvement: Now comes also with a Dutch translation!
- Improvement: The program will now show an error message if user attempts to enter conflicting search paths. For example, trying to search from C: and C:Windows will trigger the error message, because if C: is searched, then C:Windows is already also included to the search.
- Improvement: The number of already analyzed dirs and keys is now updated more often, which avoids the potentially confusing situation with the program searching but the status text not updating.
- Improvement: The Search, Saved searches and Ignore tabs now show a tooltip that shows the content of these sections.
- Improvement: Trying to start the search with a confusing set of search options and paths will now display an error message. For example, if you choose only to look for files, yet the search from paths only include registry keys, there are filesystem paths to search and therefore the search can never find anything.
- Improvement: The search page will now automatically fill in certain search settings if the user has forgotten to enter them. For example, if you choose to search for PDF documents by their content and you have the Look for files of specific type option selected, but the list of file types does not include PDF files, PDF is automatically added to the list of file extensions.
- Fix: If the search completed very quickly, the user interface could display "Searched 0 folders and found xyz results". The UI saying the program searched zero paths was misleading and incorrect.
- Fix: In some cases, the "Do not search these paths" was not honored and the results could include items from excluded paths.
- Fix: It was not possible to add a Windows network drive / NAS drive to the search source paths list using the ... button.
- Fix: In some cases, the program could list results that match some of the specified ignore words.
New in WinFindr 1.3 (Sep 21, 2023)
- Improvement: WinFindr can now search for files inside Zip and Rar files.
- Improvement: WinFindr can now search for data inside text files (.txt, .csv etc) and inside document files (.doc, .odt and .pdf)
- Improvement: WinFindr can now search files based on their size, for example, to only look for files that are smaller than a specific size.
- Improvement: The search speed is now greatly improved in the AND logic mode, that is, all of the given search terms must match.
- Improvement: Added an option to Settings for you to decide whether you want search settings to be saved between sessions.
- Improvement: Added an option to use the standard window frame instead of the custom one.
- Improvement: Added an option to use larger font within the program's UI.
- Improvement: Aborted search will now say why the search was aborted, for example, whether a timeout happened.
- Improvement: You can now enter Windows environment variables as search source paths, for example, %TMP%
- Improvement: If you only search for filesystem data, all the default registry related data are automatically cleared from the UI.
- Improvement: You can now define whether you want to search for registry entry names, entry values or both, and which types of registry entries you want to search for.
- Improvement: The search progress bar now works smoother.
- Improvement: Registry search results now display the exact type of the found registry entries.
- Fix: The default disk drive selection can include non fixed drives, which can cause errors when searching. For example, the default drive selection could contain a Google Drive drive or a DVD drive without any disk in it, and searching from them could cause the search to fail.
- Fix: It was possible to edit the Ignore search terms and other search settings while a search was already running.
- Fix: The search timeout setting didn't always work.
- Fix: Saving the results list to a file dialog could use incorrect colors if the main user interface was in dark mode.
- Fix: After you have searched something AND selected at least one row from the results, then open the Search tab or Settings tab and Right Click. The menu would show "Copy path to clipboard", even though the results list is not even open.
- Fix: If the search ends with an automated stoppage (e.g. via timeout), OR user clicks the Stop button to stop the search, the Settings tab was not visible, while it should be visible if no search is currently active.
- Fix: If you had some search terms already written, and then you did Right Click > Reset search, the list of search terms was cleared, but the Search tab still showed the number of search terms before clicking Reset search.
- Fix: In some special cases, the search could get stuck and never complete without a timout. This could happen in systems where the filesystem or Windows registry contained special symbolic links which formed a loop, and WinFindr would scan that loop until the program's timeout triggered.
- Fix: The default result list column widths were not very optimal in relation to the app window size.
- Fix: Clicking Start and Save and entering a name for the saved search that already exists causes an error message about a duplicate name to show, this is correct. However, the search would still start even though the saving of the search was aborted.
New in WinFindr 1.2 (Jul 13, 2023)
- Improvement: The data searching now works faster, a lot faster. Especially in cases
- of many search words or many ignore words used at the same time. In the real world
- benchmark test, the improvement was a mind boggling 2100% speed increase.
- New feature: Save and Start allows you to save the search parameters and start the
- search, with a click of just one button. Previously you had to first run a search
- before it was possible to save it for future use.
- New feature: Dedicated search paths exclusion input allows you to easily define which
- paths you don't want to be searched. previously this had to be done via the Ignore
- search terms, which was a bit awkward.
- New feature: Dedicated buttons to add new directories to the search sources and
- exclude sources lists.
- Fix: The Search page could be shown in a way that the search terms input field is
- hidden. This could happen in systems with specific screen resolution and font
- settings. This is now fixed by including a vertical scroll bar to the Search page.
New in WinFindr 1.1 (Jun 22, 2023)
- New feature: Dedicated search source input field allows you to define which drives and/or registry root keys to search, previously this had to be done via the Ignore search terms, which was a bit awkward.
- New feature: Ability to save searches. If you are often running the same searches, simply save it and it can be later run with just one click.
- New feature: Added a Right Click menu option to copy the selected item’s path to clipboard.
- New feature: Added a Right Click menu option to save only the selected items to file.
- Fix: The Search Log can sometimes display a wrong number of results found in its total value.
- Fix: The search process could get stuck and never complete in some systems using a specific set of search terms.
- Improvement: The scan progress view now shows how many directories and registry keys have been analyzed, previously only their sum was shown.
- Improvement: Added a search progress bar which is visible after the given search source paths have been analyzed already at least one time.
- Improvement: In case the program fails to save its settings to disk, there is now an error message informing the user that this just happened.
- Improvement: If running in Portable mode, the program will use WinFindr.dat within the program folder to save its settings if the file exists, if not, the WinFindr.dat file is created to the system’s temporary directory.
- Improvement: Reset Search is no longer visible in the Right Click menu during the search, as it doesn’t really make sense.
- Improvement: Searching with multiple search terms is now a bit faster.