Yeah, the sheer idea of paying a subscription for software that is running on my computer to index local resources is crazy. This kind of software should be should sold as one-time buy license.

Decades ago there was an amazing piece of software from lotus when I worked there called magellan. I remember the first time I saw someone search, and find results in text documents, spreadsheets and many other of the common formats of the day.

That was in 1989 and today I mostly search my computer using find and grep commands, since that's what just keeps working.

I should try adopting find and grep, but on Windows I'm currently using this and I'm very happy with it: https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/

I use Void Tools Everything to find files by name, and AstroGrep for finding information in them.

Yup, I could see paying $180 one time for something like this. but at $180 a year for a self hosted product... that's just very steep.

Google used to have a native Mac extension like a launch bar. Command space ... Enter search all local files. It was really fast

macOS Spotlight became good enough

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(software)

Well I used LaunchBar and then Quicksilver for many years. Spotlight has never been as nice and hackable as those.