folderscope/README.md

FolderScope

Fast, native file search for Linux with a Windows-style GUI.

FolderScope is a C++20 + Qt 6 desktop app for finding files across one or more folders without indexing or background services. It is designed for fast interactive searches, duplicate discovery, and detailed result inspection in a single window.

Highlights

• search across multiple root folders;
• filter by name patterns, size, timestamps, and file attributes;
• inspect duplicate files and files with matching names;
• optionally verify duplicate matches byte by byte in strict mode;
• search inside file contents, including text and hex;
• reuse a persistent, automatically invalidated cache for content matches and duplicate hashes;
• show folder summaries and duplicate groups;
• sort, resize, hide, and restore columns, including per-column header actions;
• export results to CSV, TSV/TXT, HTML, XML, and JSON;
• open files and folders, copy paths, and use context actions from the results table;
• run searches in parallel for responsive large-directory scans.

Building

Requirements:

• CMake
• a C++20 compiler
• Qt 6 with Widgets, Concurrent, and DBus

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j
./build/folderscope

Run the automated tests:

ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

Install into the current system:

cmake --install build

Packages

CPack produces native packages after a release build (the output is ignored by Git):

cpack --config build/CPackConfig.cmake -B package

This creates .deb and .rpm packages. A Flatpak manifest is available at packaging/org.folderscope.FolderScope.yml:

flatpak-builder --user --install --force-clean build-flatpak \
  packaging/org.folderscope.FolderScope.yml

For Arch, use packaging/arch/PKGBUILD with a release tarball named folderscope-VERSION.tar.gz.

Published releases are also available through the Gitea Arch package registry. Import its signing key and add the following to /etc/pacman.conf:

curl -LO https://gitea.forust.xyz/api/packages/forust/arch/repository.key
sudo pacman-key --add repository.key
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key "$(gpg --show-keys --with-colons repository.key | awk -F: '/^fpr:/ {print $10; exit}')"

[folderscope]
SigLevel = Required
Server = https://gitea.forust.xyz/api/packages/forust/arch/$repo/$arch

Then install with sudo pacman -Syu folderscope (or yay -S folderscope).

Translations are Qt .ts files in translations/; CMake compiles and installs their .qm files automatically. The application selects the system locale at startup.

Notes

FolderScope targets Linux only.

Some Windows-specific SearchMyFiles features do not map directly to Linux, including NTFS-only metadata and Windows shell integrations. The app uses the native Linux equivalents where available.