SearchBox: A Local-First Document Search Application
SearchBox is a local-first document search application designed to index your files—folders, ZIP and ZIM (Kiwix/Wikipedia) archives, and qBittorrent downloads—and enable instant searches from a clean web UI. It prioritizes privacy by keeping all data on your machine, ensuring nothing leaves your computer.
Key Features:
Local Indexing: Efficiently index files such as PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, notes, images, and more.
Archive Support: Seamlessly search within ZIP and ZIM archives, including offline Wikipedia content.
qBittorrent Integration: Directly access and index completed downloads from qBittorrent.
Encrypted Vault: Secure sensitive files with AES-256 encryption, accessible only with your password.
AI Summaries: Optional integration with Ollama for local AI-generated summaries of search results.
Private Data Storage: All data remains on your machine, ensuring privacy and security.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for users who value privacy and seek efficient document management. SearchBox offers quick access to information without compromising security or relying on external services. It is perfect for individuals and professionals alike who need reliable, secure document search capabilities.
Install via winget for a seamless experience.
README
SearchBox
Find anything on your computer — instantly, and completely private.
If SearchBox is useful to you, please ⭐ star the repo — it helps others find it.
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.
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.
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).
Double-click it and follow the installer.
(Windows may show a "publisher not recognized" notice the first time — click More info → Run anyway.)
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.
Prefer the terminal? winget install SourceBox.SearchBox does the same thing.
Runs on Windows 10 and 11. (Windows 11 ships with Microsoft's WebView2
component built in. On Windows 10, if SearchBox won't open, install the free
WebView2 Runtime
first — the installer doesn't bundle it yet.)
Your first two minutes
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.
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.
Search. Start typing in the search bar. Results appear as you go —
click one to open it.
Developer docs — architecture, the HTTP API,
frontend conventions, and the dev workflow.
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).
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.
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.
Other ways to run it
Native Linux (x86_64 tarball)
Grab SearchBox-…-x86_64-linux.tar.gz from the
Releases page, then:
tar -xzf SearchBox-*-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
cd SearchBox-*-x86_64-linux
./searchbox
# → open http://127.0.0.1:8080 in your browser
Meilisearch is bundled in the tarball and picked up automatically as long as
it stays next to the searchbox binary. Your data lives in
~/.local/share/searchbox (or $XDG_DATA_HOME/searchbox). Stop with Ctrl-C
or SIGTERM — the search sidecar shuts down with the app.
Unlike Windows there's no desktop window yet — SearchBox runs as a local
server and you use it from your browser. In-app self-update is also
Windows-only; on Linux just extract a newer tarball over the old one (your
data directory is untouched).
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 (the image isn't on Docker Hub — build it
locally first):
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
127.0.0.1
Bind address (localhost-only by default; set 0.0.0.0 to opt in to network access)
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.
If SearchBox is useful to you, please ⭐ 
