sist2app/sist2
FreeLightning-fast file system indexer and search tool
FreeFree tier
About sist2app/sist2
sist2 (Simple Incremental Search Tool) is an open-source, lightning-fast file system indexer and search tool. It scans directories to extract text and metadata from a wide range of file types (PDF, EPUB, images, audio, video, archives, etc.), generates thumbnails, and supports incremental scanning. The tool offers a mobile-friendly web interface for browsing, searching, and managing scan jobs. Advanced features include OCR via Tesseract, named-entity recognition (client-side), manual and automatic tagging, and a disk utilization statistics page. It can use Elasticsearch or SQLite as the search backend.
Key Features
Fast, low memory usage, multi-threaded scanning
Manage scheduled scan jobs via a simple web interface (Docker only)
Mobile-friendly web interface for browsing and searching
Extracts text and metadata from common file types (PDF, EPUB, images, audio, video, archives, etc.)
Generates thumbnails for images, videos, and documents
Incremental scanning for efficient updates
Manual tagging from UI and automatic tagging based on file attributes via user scripts
Recursive scanning inside archive files (ZIP, RAR, etc.)
OCR support with Tesseract
Disk utilization visualization on stats page
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Open source and free to use
- Very fast scanning with low memory footprint and multi-threading
- Supports a wide variety of file formats for text extraction and thumbnails
- Incremental scanning saves time on subsequent runs
- Web UI is mobile-friendly and easy to use
- Built-in OCR support via Tesseract
- Both Elasticsearch and SQLite backends available
- Named-entity recognition for enriched search results
Cons
- Still in early development phase (warning on README)
- Scheduled scan jobs only available in Docker deployment
- Best performance requires Elasticsearch (SQLite backend is more limited)
- No built-in cloud sync or remote access features
- Limited documentation beyond the GitHub README
Best For
Indexing and searching personal document collectionsBuilding a self-hosted local search engine for media filesOrganizing large archives of scanned documents with OCRQuickly locating files across multiple drives or network sharesAutomated tagging and metadata extraction for file management
FAQ
What file formats does sist2 support?
sist2 supports PDF, XPS, FB2, EPUB (via MuPDF), CBZ, CBR, audio and video files (via FFmpeg), images (via FFmpeg with OCR support), raw camera formats (via LibRaw), and font files (TTF, TTC, CFF, WOFF).
Does sist2 support OCR?
Yes, sist2 has OCR support using Tesseract for images and PDFs.
How can I install sist2?
You can run sist2 using Docker Compose (recommended for all platforms) or download the executable binary for Linux/WSL. For Docker, use the provided docker-compose.yml. For binaries, download the latest release and mark as executable.
What search backends are available?
sist2 supports Elasticsearch (version 6.8.x to 7.x) and SQLite. Elasticsearch offers more advanced search features, while SQLite requires no additional setup.