Kerything 🔍

Kerything is a lightning-fast NTFS and EXT4 file search utility for Linux, built with C++26, Qt 6, and KDE Frameworks 6.

Inspired by the Windows utility "Everything" by Voidtools, Kerything bypasses standard directory crawling by reading the NTFS Master File Table (MFT) or scanning EXT4 inodes directly. This allows it to index millions of files per second.

The application is targeted at KDE Plasma desktop users who want a fast file search utility for their NTFS and EXT4 drives, including those who dual-boot Windows or still use NTFS hard disks on their Linux machine. 🐧✨

The name is a nod to the iconic "Everything" utility, while the 'K' prefix follows the long-standing naming tradition of the KDE community.

Kerything is a community project and is not affiliated with Voidtools.

🚀 Features

• Blazing Fast Indexing: (tested on 7200rpm HDDs)
  • Scans NTFS partitions at 2M+ files per second.
  • Scans EXT4 partitions at 1.2M+ files per second.
• Offline Indexing: Supports scanning NTFS and EXT4 partitions even when they are not mounted in Linux.
• Instant Search: Uses trigram indexing for real-time search results as you type.
• Full Unicode Support: Search for filenames containing any UTF-8 character, including international scripts, emojis and symbols.
• Zero Bloat: Simple, lightning-fast keyword search. By foregoing file-content scanning, regular expressions and other complex patterns, Kerything stays lightweight and responsive.
• Multithreaded: Leverages Intel OneTBB for parallel trigram generation and sorting.
• Rich Context Actions: Right-click menu integration (similar to Dolphin) to open, copy, or manage files directly from the results. (Note: Most context actions are only available if the drive was mounted at the time it was scanned.)
• Drag-and-Drop Support: Easily copy or attach files by dragging them from the search results into Dolphin or other applications. (Note: Currently not supported for Flatpak or other sandboxed applications due to portal limitations.)
• Native KDE Integration: Built with KF6 for a consistent look and feel on KDE Plasma desktops.
• Low Overhead: The index is stored in memory with an emphasis on efficiency. By using string pooling (e.g., storing a folder path only once even if it contains thousands of files), Kerything maintains a surprisingly small memory footprint even for massive partitions.

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

Kerything is designed to be usable without leaving the keyboard, following standard KDE/Dolphin conventions:

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl + L or Alt + D	Focus search bar and select all text
Down / Up	Move focus from search bar to the results table
Return	Open selected file(s) with default applications
Ctrl + Return	Open the folder containing the selected file
Ctrl + C	Copy selected file(s) to clipboard (for pasting into Dolphin or another application)
Ctrl + Alt + C	Copy selected file(s) full absolute path(s) to clipboard
Alt + Shift + F4	Open your default terminal in the folder of the selected file.
Ctrl + O	Change to a different partition
F5	Rescan the selected partition
Ctrl + Q	Exit the application

🛠️ How It Works

Kerything operates in two parts:

1. The Scanner Helper (kerything-scanner-helper): A small C++ utility that runs via pkexec. It requires root privileges to access the raw block device of your NTFS/EXT4 partition to read the MFT records/inodes directly.
2. The GUI (kerything): Receives the raw file data from the helper, builds a search database using trigrams, and provides a responsive search interface. Runs in unprivileged user mode.

Note

For NTFS partitions, because Kerything reads the MFT directly, and because the ntfs-3g FUSE driver doesn't support fanotify or update the USN Journal on disk, live file system updates are not currently supported - simply press F5 within the application to rescan the partition and get an updated index.

For EXT4 partitions, real-time updates using fanotify are a planned feature.

💻 Tech Stack

• Language: C++26
• GUI: Qt 6.8+ & KDE Frameworks 6
• Parallelism: Intel OneTBB (Thread Building Blocks)
• Indexing: Trigram-based search with MFT direct-access

📦 Requirements

• Frameworks: Qt 6.x, KDE Frameworks 6 (KF6)
• Libraries: Intel OneTBB
• System: pkexec (Polkit) for root elevation
• Compiler: A C++26 compatible compiler (e.g., GCC 14+ or Clang 18+)
• Sudo Permission: Your user account also needs to be in a group (like wheel) that can use pkexec

🔨 Building and Installation

Arch Linux

Dependencies

You likely already have the required dependencies installed. You can check with:

pacman -Q qt6-base kwidgetsaddons kcoreaddons solid kio extra-cmake-modules onetbb e2fsprogs

If you get any 'not found' errors, install the ones you need with:

sudo pacman -S qt6-base kwidgetsaddons kcoreaddons solid kio extra-cmake-modules onetbb e2fsprogs

Installation steps:

# Clone the repository
git clone --branch v1.3.3 --depth 1 https://github.com/Reikooters/kerything.git

# Enter the source code directory
cd kerything

# Build and install the package
makepkg -si -f -c

Enter your sudo password when prompted. The application will then be managed as a package under pacman.

Once installed, you can find Kerything in your application menu to start using it.

Manual installation is also possible:

# Clone the repository
git clone --branch v1.3.3 --depth 1 https://github.com/Reikooters/kerything.git

# Enter the source code directory
cd kerything

# Create and enter the build directory
cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -Wno-dev

# Compile the project
cmake --build build

# Install the project
sudo cmake --install build

Uninstallation steps:

If you installed the application using makepkg, the package can be uninstalled with pacman using the following command:

sudo pacman -R kerything

Otherwise, if you used the manual installation steps, the project can be uninstalled as follows:

# Enter the source code directory
cd kerything

# Uninstall the project
sudo cmake --build build --target uninstall

Other Linux Distributions

The application should be compatible with most Linux distributions that support Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6, but I haven't tested it on any other distributions than Arch Linux.

You can follow the steps below to build and install the application manually.

Installation steps:

# Clone the repository
git clone --branch v1.3.3 --depth 1 https://github.com/Reikooters/kerything.git

# Enter the source code directory
cd kerything

# Create and enter the build directory
cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -Wno-dev

# Compile the project
cmake --build build

# Install the project
sudo cmake --install build

Once installed, you can find Kerything in your application menu to start using it.

Uninstallation steps:

# Enter the source code directory
cd kerything

# Uninstall the project
sudo cmake --build build --target uninstall

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's bug reports, feature requests, or code:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

🗺️ Future Plans

• Live Updates: Implementing fanotify support for EXT4 partitions to keep the index updated in real-time.

💖 Credits

Kerything makes use of the following excellent open-source libraries:

• utfcpp: A simple, portable and lightweight library for handling UTF-8 encoded strings in C++.
• onetbb: Intel's oneAPI Threading Building Blocks library for parallelism.
• e2fsprogs: The Linux filesystem tools used to read EXT4 partitions.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0-or-later License - see the LICENSE file for details.