What is the correct way to index and search a friend's smartphone?

[Stamimail]

In order to free up storage space, my friend asked me to search and move video files from his smartphone to his portable drive.

This is a situation where you want to use your Everything with all the settings, apart from the index, that should not be mixed with your index.

[raccoon]

If they are on a micro SD card on his phone, I would pop out the micro SD and pop it into a real computer, then dump a copy of it onto a drive. After that, scrub stuff off the SD card like normal (you can use Everything), or just format it. Then buy a 512 gig micro SD.

Otherwise if you're plugging the phone into a computer to index the contents, then you'll have to use Everything 1.5 within Indexes -> Folders -> Add Custom. (eg: Computer\Galaxy A13\SD card )

[void]

Add the phone as a folder index.

If you want to avoid the quick rebuild, fire up a new instance:

Everything.exe -instance phone -no-auto-include
In this new "phone" instance, add the phone as a folder index.

[Stamimail]

If you want to avoid the quick rebuild, fire up a new instance:

Some problems:
1. You want to open this new instance easily from the GUI
2. The regular -instance makes completely new settings, and here you want to keep the settings (bookmarks, filters, history, colors...).
3. I'm not sure, but it might be better to put instances files under "instances" folder, to avoid mixing with the main Everything files.

Everything-1.5.0.1356a.x86\instances\ETP Server\
Everything-1.5.0.1356a.x86\instances\phone\

[void]

Adding as a new folder is the preferred method.

The option to temporarily add a folder to your index without a rebuild is on my TODO list.



I will consider an option to create a new instance from within the UI.
I will consider options to share settings between instances.
Instances use unique filenames for settings and data.
Typically: filename-instance.ext

Thank you for the suggestions.

[Stamimail]

Firefox let you to open a
New Private Window (Ctrl+Shift+P)

(incognito in chrome)

I think in a similar way, it is good to make within the UI an option to open a "new temporary instacne".
What this will do is create a new temporary instance of Everything, a new window with all the existing settings (like Ctrl+N) but without the database, and allow the user to create a new index from scratch(*). When you close the window, the temporary database is removed.

(*) IMO, this should show a drive selection dialog-box, which should also appear on the first run of Everything.