Prefer "interesting" results over uninteresting results

[vqrs]

First of all, awesome software!

Goal

Make it easy to separate interesting from uninteresting results while preserving the ability to still search for the uninteresting results.


As a programmer, I have tons and tons of files and folders on my computer due to downloaded libraries (think Maven, Gradle caches, node_modules, libs for cmake etc).

Thus, searching for files by fragments of the name only will often show me tons of of results, e.g. wanting to navigate to my "kotlin" folder, I get over 4000 folder results because of various caches and downloaded library files, even though I only have 1-10 folders that I'm interested in with "kotlin" in the name.

I don't want to outright exclude these directories from the index because I sometimes still need to be able to locate them.


Feature Idea

Here's one idea how this could work: Allow to define "groups". Items are assigned into one of these groups according to rules.
That way files from multiple directories can be organized into the same group, while some specific subfolders could still be assigned to a different group.

The results view could then show not only one list of results, but a hierarchy (and a toggle to use the current list based view), for example:

• Personal Documents
  • Result
  • Result
• Programming Projects
  • Result 1
  • Result 2
• Everything Else
  • Result 1
  • Result 2
• Library files, Caches and other things
  • Result
  • Result
  • Result

Here, Everything shows the different groups in a custom order, and also has a special group "Everything Else" for files/folders that did not match any rules.

As an idea how the settings page might look:

• List of Groups, defines order in which groups appear in results, contains special "Everything else" group or similar
  • Group Name
  • Personal Documents
  • Programming Projects
  • Everything Else*
  • Library files, Caches and other things
  • Add/Delete/Edit/Up/Down buttons
• List of Rules
  • Rule | Assigned Group
  • In Directory: C:\Users\vqrs\projects\tools\cache | Library files, Caches and other things
  • In Directory: C:\Users\vqrs\.m2 | Library files, Caches and other things
  • In Directory: C:\Users\vqrs\.gradle | Library files, Caches and other things
  • Parent directory: node_modules | Library files, Caches and other things
  • In Directory: C:\Users\vqrs\projects | Programming Projects
  • In Directory: C:\Users\vqrs\Documents\Personal | Personal
  • Add/Delte/Edit/Up/Down buttons

I'm guessing these rule definitions would be taken into account every time the index needs to be updated. Thus, I don't know how complex the rules could be in order not to impact performance too badly. OTOH, it's an opt in feature

Cheers and thanks for considering. I'd be willing to help with the implementation if that helps to get the feature done of course.

[NotNull]

Sounds like filters can help you here.

(You can also increase the run count of specific files/folders to move those results to the top (when sorted by Run Count))

[vqrs]

Thanks a lot for the reply.

You're right, filters could help me cut down on some of the noise by default without excluding them from the index.

However, for me, one of the primary things I like about Everything is how it gives me an overview of what I have and narrows the results down as I type.
I don't really need to think that much about where it is, knowing parts of the name is usually enough. If I see stuff I want or don't want, I will usually add a pattern that just filters based on some additional parent directory to iteratively remove stuff from the results. Simply a great user experience!

With filters, I will consciously need to apply the correct filter I need via the mouse or remember the macro. As soon as I pick one, the rest of the results disappear. Sure, I could use OR to see multiple, but I think it's just a fundamentally different user experience if that makes sense.

So, my idea isn't so much about getting to the final result I want but rather about giving me yet better means of viewing result lists.

I still think something like the groups approach where you get an overview of the results immediately without having to make any conscious choice would be a great addition.