SearchBox

Find anything on your computer — instantly, and completely private.

SearchBox looks inside your files — PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, notes, web pages, even images — and finds what you're after in a blink, even if you don't remember the exact words (or spell them wrong). Everything runs on your own computer. Nothing is uploaded, tracked, or sent anywhere.

Free, open source, and yours to keep.

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What you can do with it

🔎 Search everything	Type a word or phrase; SearchBox searches the contents of your files, not just their names.
✨ Forgiving search	Typos are fine — it still finds what you meant.
📂 Point it at a folder	Pick any folder and SearchBox reads everything inside so it's all searchable.
📚 Index ZIP & ZIM archives	Point it at a .zip or an offline-Wikipedia .zim (Kiwix) and it reads everything inside — searchable and browsable like a folder, articles and all.
🗂️ Open files in the app	Read PDFs, Word docs, and notes right inside SearchBox.
🖼️ Browse your images	A built-in gallery and an "Explore" view to flip through everything visually.
🔒 Private vault	Upload sensitive files and lock them behind your password — encrypted on disk.
🤖 AI summaries (optional)	Connect a free local AI and get a short summary of your results — still 100% on your machine.
⭐ Bookmarks & history	Pin your most-used documents and jump back to recent searches.

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Get SearchBox (Windows)

The easy way — no setup, no technical steps:

1. Open the Releases page.
2. Download the latest installer for your PC — SearchBox-…-x86_64.msi for most machines, or SearchBox-…-aarch64.msi for ARM64 Windows (e.g. Snapdragon laptops).
3. Double-click it and follow the installer. (Windows may show a "publisher not recognized" notice the first time — click More info → Run anyway.)
4. Launch SearchBox from the Start menu.

SearchBox opens in its own window, just like any normal app. Close the window to quit; reopen it from the Start menu whenever you like.

Runs on Windows 10 and 11. (On Windows 10 you may be asked once to install Microsoft's free "WebView2" component — it's a quick automatic download. Windows 11 already has it.)

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Your first two minutes

1. Create your account. The first time you open SearchBox it asks you to set up an account — just an email and a password. This never leaves your computer; it's how you log in and how your private vault is locked.
2. Add a folder. Go to Settings, choose a folder to index (your Documents folder is a great start), and watch the progress as SearchBox reads through it.
3. Search. Start typing in the search bar. Results appear as you go — click one to open it.

That's it. You can add more folders any time.

📷 Screenshot: search results for an example query.

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Search shortcuts

Type these right in the search bar to narrow your results:

• budget ::pdf — only PDF files
• notes ::docx — only Word documents
• figures ::xlsx — only Excel spreadsheets
• vacation ::image — jump to the image gallery
• taxes ::vault — only files in your private vault

Power users can also combine filters with ::&& (and), ::|| (or), and ::! (not).

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Your privacy, in plain terms

• Nothing leaves your computer. No ads, no tracking, no cloud account, no phoning home.
• Runs on localhost only. SearchBox and its search index listen on 127.0.0.1 — not your network — so your files and index stay on your machine.
• Your vault is encrypted with your password using strong encryption (AES-256). Files in the vault can't be read without it.
• Recovery key for password reset. During setup, you'll download a recovery key — save it somewhere safe. If you forget your password, the recovery key lets you reset it and keep accessing your vault. Without the recovery key, vault files cannot be recovered.

Curious about the details? See SECURITY.md for encryption details and recovery key guidance.

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Questions people ask

Is it really free? Yes — free and open source (AGPL-3.0 license).

Do I need an internet connection? No. SearchBox works entirely offline. (The only exception is the optional AI feature, and even that runs locally once it's set up.)

Where are my files and data stored? Your search index and settings live in %LocalAppData%\SearchBox on your PC. Uninstalling SearchBox leaves your data right where it is.

It says the "search engine" is off — what do I do? SearchBox includes a small search engine that normally starts on its own. If it doesn't, open Settings → Search Engine → Start. (With the official installer this is handled for you automatically.)

How do I turn on AI summaries? Install Ollama (a free tool that runs AI models on your own machine), then enable it in Settings. Everything stays local.

Can it search my downloads? If you use qBittorrent, SearchBox can find and index your completed downloads — switch it on in Settings.

How do I update? SearchBox can update itself — go to Settings → About → Check for updates (it only reaches out to GitHub when you ask, and there's an opt-in "check on startup" toggle). Or just download the latest MSI from the Releases page and run it; it upgrades in place.

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Other ways to run it

Docker (Linux, macOS, Windows)

docker compose up -d
# App:          http://localhost:8080
# Search engine: http://localhost:7700

First launch walks you through account setup, then index a folder from the Settings page. Data lives in named volumes (searchbox-data, searchbox-vault, searchbox-thumbnails, meili-data), so docker compose down won't delete anything.

One-shot run without compose:

docker run -d --name searchbox \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 7700:7700 \
  -v searchbox-data:/app/instance \
  -v searchbox-vault:/app/vault \
  -v searchbox-thumbnails:/app/static/thumbnails \
  -v meili-data:/app/meili_data \
  -e SEARCHBOX_SECRET_KEY=change-me \
  sourcebox/searchbox:latest

On Windows, to index drive letters (C:\, D:\, …) rather than whatever Docker maps into its Linux VM, add the drive-letter overlay:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.windows.yml up -d

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For developers

Tech stack

• Axum web server (Rust / Tokio)
• SQLite via sqlx — single-file database
• Meilisearch sidecar — typo-tolerant full-text search
• MiniJinja HTML templates
• wry + tao — the native desktop window (WebView2) on Windows
• Ollama (optional) — local LLMs for AI summaries
• Pure-Rust document extraction — pdf-extract, calamine (XLSX), quick-xml + zip (DOCX), pulldown-cmark, scraper (HTML)
• AES-256-GCM vault with a PBKDF2-derived key (600k rounds) from the admin password
• Single self-contained binary — templates and static assets are embedded via rust-embed (debug builds read from disk so edits are live)

Build & run from source

Requires Rust 1.84+ and a Meilisearch binary (download one from meilisearch releases and drop meilisearch(.exe) next to the built searchbox binary — it's auto-detected — or set its path in Settings → Search Engine).

cargo run --release
# Windows opens the SearchBox desktop window; elsewhere browse to
# http://localhost:8080 — first run walks you through account setup

See BUILD.md for release builds and the Windows installer (MSI).

Configuration (environment variables)

Var	Default	Purpose
SEARCHBOX_HOST	0.0.0.0	Bind address
SEARCHBOX_PORT	8080	Bind port
SEARCHBOX_DB_DIR	.	Where searchbox.db lives
SEARCHBOX_BASE_DIR	cwd	Root for writable runtime dirs (vault/, meili_data/, static/thumbnails/)
SEARCHBOX_SECRET_KEY	dev stub	Session cookie signing (set this in production)
MEILI_PUBLIC_HOST	—	Browser-facing Meilisearch URL when it differs from the server-side one (e.g. a Docker bridge)
MEILI_PORT	7700	Port for the Meilisearch sidecar
MEILI_MASTER_KEY	dev stub	Meilisearch master key
OLLAMA_URL	—	Set via the Settings page at runtime; this env var is only read by tooling

Everything else — Meilisearch path, Ollama URL / model / timeout, qBittorrent credentials, AI-search toggle — lives in the settings table and is editable from the Settings page.

Project layout

├── src/           # Rust source
│   ├── main.rs    # boot, desktop window (wry), graceful shutdown
│   ├── config.rs, db.rs, state.rs, error.rs, templates.rs
│   ├── auth/      # argon2 + session extractor
│   ├── models/    # SQLx structs + CRUD
│   ├── routes/    # Axum route handlers
│   ├── services/  # Meilisearch, Ollama, extractor, Meili supervisor
│   ├── vault/     # AES-256-GCM + PBKDF2 wrap/unwrap
│   └── jobs/      # background indexing-job tracker
├── schema.sql     # applied on boot
├── templates/     # HTML (MiniJinja)
├── static/        # CSS + JS
├── wix/           # Windows MSI installer
├── Dockerfile, docker-compose.yml, fly.toml, entrypoint.sh

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License

AGPL-3.0-or-later · © SourceBox LLC