Content Search
Search inside PDFs, images, screenshots, scans, text files, and Office documents with a private local index and on-device OCR.
Content Search lets you search inside PDFs, images, screenshots, scanned documents, text files, and supported Office documents. NameQuick indexes existing text in readable files and uses on-device OCR to read text visible inside images and scans, on Mac and Windows.
Instead of matching only filenames and paths, NameQuick builds a private local index of the content of the files in All Files, such as the files from your watched folders. It does not search every file on your computer. You can then search for a customer name, an invoice total, an order number, a SKU, a sentence, or a phrase, even when the filename says nothing useful.
Use Content Search when a file is in your NameQuick library but the name gives you nothing to go on. To rename those messy files based on their content, see Smart Rename.
How It Works#
Open All Files
Type into the search field
The field reads Search name, path, or document text. The same field searches names, paths, and document text, so there is no separate search mode. Results can show the source of the match and a text snippet, which tells you why each file matched, so you can land on the right document without opening every result.
Select a result
See Content match in the file details, with the source and, where available, the page.
Caution
The snippet shows where a word appears; check dates and amounts in the original document.
What gets indexed#
- PDFs with a text layer are searched through their embedded text.
- Scanned PDFs and images are processed with on-device OCR, so text inside receipts, screenshots, product labels, invoices, forms, and photographed documents becomes searchable.
- Text and supported Office files are indexed from their readable content.
Caution
Only files that are fully available locally are indexed. Cloud placeholders are skipped until the file is downloaded. Large files may be only partly searchable, and a password-protected PDF can't be indexed. A missing result doesn't prove a word isn't in the document, so also try a known part of the name or path.
NameQuick supports 30+ file formats. See Supported File Formats for the full list.
Examples#
| You search for | NameQuick finds |
|---|---|
Telekom | The phone bill PDF, even when it is named scan_0042.pdf |
invoice 39.95 | The invoice that carries that total in its body |
OpenAI receipt | The receipt image, read with OCR |
serial number | The manual or warranty card that lists it |
contract renewal | The agreement that mentions the renewal terms |
Each of these works even when the filename is generic, wrong, or was never renamed.
On-device OCR#
Scanned documents and images contain no selectable text by default. NameQuick uses the operating system's text recognition (OCR, optical character recognition) to read that text and add it to the index: macOS text recognition on Mac, Windows text recognition on Windows. Matches found this way show the source PDF OCR or Image OCR.
Local on your computer
OCR runs locally, so neither the images nor the recognized text leave your device for indexing.
For PDFs, OCR runs only on pages whose embedded text isn't enough, not on every page. If the computer has no usable recognition language installed, NameQuick tells you that text recognition is unavailable.
Indexing is separate from naming. When NameQuick names a file, your chosen mode decides where the content goes; see Privacy & Your Data.
Privacy and Control#
The index is a local database on your computer and is never uploaded. Which files it covers follows your library: files enter it through All Files, for example from your watched folders.
Indexing runs in the background and pauses during batch renames. It does not block normal search: even if indexing a file's content fails, you can still find it by name or path. You can keep working while NameQuick catches up.
Why It Helps#
- Find PDFs, screenshots, scans, and images by the text inside them.
- Search invoices, receipts, contracts, manuals, statements, notes, and screenshots in one place.
- See content snippets so you know why a file matched.
- Works in the background without blocking normal search.
- Keeps the index fully local.
Content Search lets NameQuick find and organize files from what they actually contain, not only from filenames that may be generic, wrong, or never updated. Combined with Smart Rename and Rules, it closes the loop: name files from their content, file them in the right place, and find them later by the words inside them.