# Kensaku

A local file launcher that searches inside documents, code, and screenshots.

HTML: https://softbests.com/software/kensaku
Markdown: https://softbests.com/software/kensaku.md
Website: https://github.com/yjid/kensaku

- Category: [Developer utilities](https://softbests.com/category/developer-tools)
- Pricing: Open source
- Platforms: macOS, Windows, Linux
- Underrated

## Best for

Developers and researchers who remember what a file said but not its name, and want an agent to search the same index.

## Why it deserves attention

Kensaku is an MIT-licensed Rust and Tauri app that indexes filenames in milliseconds and goes further than name matching: it reads PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, EPUB, ODT, and RTF files, covers 50-plus code and data formats, and runs OCR over screenshots with PP-OCRv6 by default. A custom unigram and bigram tokenizer handles Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text properly, and queries accept natural-language time ranges such as "last week" alongside a precise query language. It lives in the tray with a summon shortcut or runs as a normal window, offers Quick Look previews, and ships a CLI plus a loopback-only MCP server so Claude or Cursor can search the same local index. The trade-off is maturity: it is a 1.0.x project with roughly 800 stars, and releases are not code-signed, so macOS and Windows show a warning on first launch.

## Can replace

- Spotlight
- Everything

## Related and alternatives

- [Raycast](https://softbests.com/software/raycast)
- [Alfred](https://softbests.com/software/alfred)