In previous articles, I've discussed how to search for files through other means, like using the command line, but I thought I'd give a quick review of the GUI search tool, Catfish.

Catfish is an extremely powerful, and yet extremely simplistic Gtk+ based graphical tool that utilizes multiple technologies already likely in your system, to complete its searches; locate and find, and utilizes zeitgeist for search suggestions.

Sometimes, I really and truthfully just don't feel like popping open a terminal, and locating a file. Sometimes, I really just want to click around with my mouse, even if its typically slower.

Installation

Installation of Catfish is pretty straightforward in most distributions simply using your package manager of choice, although as far as I am aware, Gentoo users will not have Catfish in portage and will need to find a separate overlay for it.

Using Catfish

Using Catfish on my Manjaro Xfce install is incredibly simple. By selecting the menu button in the upper right corner, users have access to enabling or disabling various options such as:

  • Changing views, from a compact list, to thumbails / vice versa
  • Searching / Showing hidden files
  • Searching of File Contents enabled / disabled
  • Exact Match searching
  • Sidebar
  • Search Index Update

In the top left corner of the screen, is a dropdown box for quick and easy directory changing for your searches. The search bar in the top is for your search terms.

Img

One of the things that I love most about Catfish, is simply how fast it is. In my experiences, because it uses find and locate in the background, its extremely efficient at finding files in the blink of an eye, without using much in the way of resources, slowing down your system in the process.

Even doing a search simply for 'conf' on my laptop, which produced over 4000 results in less than 30 seconds, didn't slow it down whatsoever while Spotify, Firefox, LibreOfice, and a bunch of other things on the go all at once were all continuing without a hiccup.

Last thoughts

If you're looking for a simple, straightforward, no frills, nice and fast and easy to use search application for your system as an alternative to more clunky programs, or the mess of a terminal, Catfish might be up your alley. I don't really have any negatives to state about it, from my usage.