search.cmd

Fuzzy file search via a terminal user interface.

Use Case

search.cmd is an interactive search utility that can run on nearly any Windows system. Its austerity is its niche: It fills the void more powerful tools (such as GUI-driven ones) leave when these cannot be installed due to administrative restrictions or excessive reliance on dependencies. To this end, 100% of the program is written in Windows Batch.

The program invokes only standard Windows utilities. These should be available on most versions of the operating system. It neither relies on PowerShell or the Windows Scripting Host directly, nor does it embed any such code within itself. Thanks to Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility in Windows Batch files, the choice to enforce a minimal dependency footprint makes search.cmd a perfect fit for legacy systems and locked-down environments.

Core Features

• Install-free: Download and double-click to run.
• Safe to use: Elevated privileges are not required.
• Languages: English, German, French, Italian.
• Portable: Compatible with many different versions of Windows.
• Easy to distribute: Custom settings are baked into the program.

Extra Features

• Context menu: Seamlessly integrates into Windows Explorer.
• Rich output: Supports colors, hyperlinks and paging.
• Decompression: Unpacks archives and Microsoft Office files.
• Scripting: Provides useful shortcuts for the command line.
• Modular: Allows features to be toggled on or off individually.

Toolset

The program provides three interactive tools:

• Standard search to locate files based on their path on disk.
• Advanced search to find matching lines within certain files.
• List all files to obtain a complete overview of a directory.

Documentation

• Check out the user guide for an animated tour of the utility.
• View the program details page for a list of configuration options.
• See the applied design principles if you are interested in the program architecture.

Quickstart

Bring up the language selection dialog and rename the program to a localized variant:

search.cmd

Open the TUI as if it had been double-clicked, but set its search root to the current working directory:

search_en.cmd .

Interactively search through the content of all files inside the D: volume:

search_en.cmd /2 /Q "D:\"

Silently search for file paths containing 2025, Q3 and .docx in the finance directory, with the list being output to results.txt:

echo 2025 Q3 .docx|search_en.cmd /1 /Q "finance" >results.txt 2>nul

System Requirements

1. The Command Prompt (cmd.exe) must be enabled.
2. Windows must provide its standard utilities (typically inside C:\Windows\System32). The program can probe your system to check whether all of them are available.