[FREE FOREVER] EVERYTHINGTOOLBAR — Replace Windows Search With Millisecond Results, Forever Free
[FREE FOREVER] EVERYTHINGTOOLBAR — Replace Windows Search With Millisecond Results, Forever FreeWindows Search is a meme at this point — slow, dumb, misses files, fan spins, you give up. EverythingToolbar rips it out and slots in a search bar that finds any file on your drive in milliseconds, right inside your taskbar. Free, open-source, ~20 MB RAM. That’s it. That’s the post.
GitHub: https://github.com/srwi/EverythingToolbar
Engine (Everything): https://www.voidtools.com/
💀 What Windows Search has been quietly doing to you
- Re-scans your drive constantly (hence the fan spinning)
- Eats hundreds of MB of RAM in the background
- Sends what you type to Bing — yes, your local file searches go to Microsoft
- Misses files it already indexed because of permission weirdness
- Takes 5–30 seconds for what should be instant
Everything (the engine this toolbar plugs into) reads your drive’s filing cabinet index (the table NTFS already keeps of every file — Windows just doesn’t use it for search) once, then knows where everything is forever. Zero re-scanning. Indexes 800k+ files in under a second.
⚔️ The receipts — side-by-side vs Windows Search
| EverythingToolbar | Windows Search | |
|---|---|---|
 Speed |
Milliseconds | 5–30 seconds |
 RAM |
~20 MB | 200–800 MB |
 Misses files? |
Never | Constantly |
 Dark mode |
Native | “Sometimes” |
 Regex / wildcards |
Yes (*.pdf, report_*) |
No |
| Phones home? |
No | Yes (to Bing) |
 Cost |
Free, open code | “Free” with surveillance |
📥 5-minute install (two files, one toolbar tick)
Step 1 — Engine first
Install Everything (the search engine the toolbar plugs into):
https://www.voidtools.com/
Step 2 — Toolbar second
Grab the latest .exe from:
https://github.com/srwi/EverythingToolbar/releases
Pick arm64 if you’re on a Snapdragon/Apple-Silicon-style Windows machine. Otherwise x64.
Step 3 — Turn it on
Right-click your taskbar → Toolbars → tick EverythingToolbar. New search box appears.
Windows 11? The setup wizard now does the taskbar bit for you. Just say yes when it asks.
⌨️ Hotkey arsenal (steal these)
| Keys | What it does |
|---|---|
Alt + Space (or your bind) |
Open search from anywhere |
Enter |
Open the file |
Ctrl + Enter |
Open the folder the file lives in |
Shift + Enter |
Open with admin rights |
Alt + Enter |
Show file properties |
Ctrl + Shift + C |
Copy full path to clipboard |
Shift + Right-click |
System context menu |
Space |
Quick preview in QuickLook |
Ctrl + Shift + Enter |
Run as administrator |
Win + Alt + S |
Focus search box (rebindable) |
🔬 Power-user tweaks most people skip
Regex toggle in the search bar — report_2024_.*\.pdffinds patterns
Custom search filters — pre-make “Only PDFs,” “Only videos,” “Only my Downloads folder”
Side preview pane (new in v2.3.0) — see thumbnail + path before opening
Multi-language — interface in 30+ languages, localized 79%
RegEx-powered file actions — auto-run commands when you right-click certain file types
Pairs perfectly with ExplorerPatcher / StartAllBack if you want classic Windows 10 taskbar on Win 11
🪦 The goodbye list — what dies the day you install this
- Windows Search
- The “Indexing your files…” notification
- The fan-spinning “where is my CPU going” mystery
- Right-clicking through 5 folders to find one file
- “Searching Bing for your local files” (yes, that’s a real Microsoft feature)
- 30-second waits for a filename you typed in full
TL;DR: Two free installers, one taskbar tick, your file search now happens at the speed of thought. There is no downside. The only question is why you’re still reading instead of installing.
What’s the file you’ve been losing weekly that this would have saved you from?
!