Xfce Wiki

Catfish is a versatile file search utility for the Xfce desktop. Powered by Python and GTK, it is fast, flexible, and exceptional at finding files.

• Minimalistic, GTK+3 interface
• Search suggestions, powered by Zeitgeist and locate
• Powerful filtering by date, file type, and more
• Full-text file content search

• python 3
• GTK+ (3.12 or above)
• GLib (GLib / GObject Python bindings: GdkPixbuf, GLib, GTK 3, Pango, Cairo, Xfconf)
• Pexpect
• locate or mlocate

Catfish includes optional support for Zeitgeist, which is used to provide instant search results. You can learn more about Zeitgeist here:

  Homepage:  https://launchpad.net/zeitgeist-project
  Arch Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Zeitgeist

To enable Zeitgeist (on Debian-based systems), just install the Python Zeitgeist GIR binding and ensure the Zeitgeist datahub is running.

  sudo apt install gir1.2-zeitgeist-2.0 zeitgeist

To install the build and runtime requirements on a Debian-based system, the following command is sufficient:

  sudo apt install python3 python3-distutils-extra gir1.2-gdkpixbuf-2.0
  gir1.2-glib-2.0 gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-pango-1.0 python3-gi-cairo
  gir1.2-xfconf-0 xfconf python3-pexpect locate

If gir1.2-xfconf-0 cannot be found in your repository, it may be located at the Xubuntu Experimental PPA:

  https://launchpad.net/~xubuntu-dev/+archive/ubuntu/experimental

From a source repository:

1. Unpack the archive.
2. Install Catfish:
   1. To install locally (a user install), run: python3 setup.py install –user
   2. To install system-wide (a root install), run: sudo python3 setup.py install
3. For a list of command line options run: catfish –help

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