Everything bridge with Command Palette

[spooky]

I've been trying out the Command Palette utility in PowerToys, which is very popular and luckily, it enables people to build add-ons for it. I was surprised to see that someone had built a bridge with Everything:

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PND4PGFP6KM / https://github.com/goucey/EverythingExtension

I have my doubts, though. While Everything does all the heavy lifting at less than 6 MB of size, this bridge is 43 MB (and probably compressed). I also checked their privacy policy, which is only in Chinese, so I had to translate it. While things could be lost in translation, it seems that even though they don't "sell it," data can still be transmitted for "debugging purposes." Again, it's hard to know if that translation is weak compared to what they actually mean. That's why policies of that sensitive nature are written in cross-country languages.

Since the reputation of Everything is at stake, could Voidtools take a stand and provide an official alternative? At a bare minimum something with a privacy policy written in a universal language, and ideally, that works locally and doesn't have 5 times the size of the original program.

[therube]

I don't know what Command Palette is, nor am I getting a good feel for what EverythingExtension is,
but I'll note that there also exists, EverythingToolbar (in case that servers a similar purpose ?).

[spooky]

I'm amazed that you haven't heard of PowerToys. It has over 130,000 stars on GitHub and counting. It's a set of tools that enhances the Windows experience. For example, it has a key and shortcut remapper, a utility that moves the mouse across different devices on your network, a way to force 'always on top' on any app, a text extractor, a bulk renamer, and more. All of these features are integrated into one, and you can enable or disable as many as you want.

One of the best tools is the "Command Palette." I'm not sure what your knowledge is outside of the Windows OS, but maybe you have heard of the Spotlight Search in macOS. If not, it's exactly what its name implies. With a quick keyboard shortcut, you can launch a text input where you can start typing to launch apps, search settings, run commands, do math, etc. It also has extension support. For example, I use an extension to check the weather. I type "weather," and instantly, I get the full forecast without opening a browser.

EverythingExtension is another one that supposedly brings the Everything functionality to the Command Palette.

I don't use the toolbar, I hide it actually, so EverythingToolbar won't do it for me.

[phil2search]

Hello,

I use powertoys for a few utilities (I was a user of the old one) but I started uninstalling it from some of my machines and will eventually get rid of it replacing by individual programs.

It currently takes (946MB currently, no plugins) on my drive, which is just ridiculous. Such a large surface for security issues to do what?
With many many contributors (600+ of github). I assume all of them to be trusted because accepted by Microsoft?
Even if someone wrote a small plugin, you will be left with that. The effect would be marginal.

So IMHO, the problem may not be the plugin (its size fits well with the rest of it) but powertoys itself.

Good luck
Philippe

[NotNull]

I'm amazed that you haven't heard of PowerToys.

That is not what @therube said.


I hadn't read about PowerToys Command Palette either, but have used PowerToys in the past (and uninstalled it as it was quite buggy and used way too many system resources for what it should do)

[spooky]

Such a large surface for security issues to do what?

Isn't it worse to trust individual software? I mean, you have to trust ten actors instead of one, with a lot behind anonymous usernames. Even though it might have 600 contributors (by the way, since when has a large number of contributors become a problem rather than a benefit?) surely Microsoft has some level of scrutiny, given that it is their name on the front line and they will bear any consequences, especially for a business. Extensions, on the other hand, are kind of in a grey area, so anything can pass through.

That is not what @therube said.

My mistake, I suppose. Not knowing PowerToys' magnus opus can be interchangeable with not knowing PowerToys at all. It hasn't been buggy for me for the last couple of months.

In any case, I'm not here to promote PowerToys; I'm here to raise concerns about plugins IN PowerToys using the "Everything" name to market who knows what.

[Herkules97]

If you're unsure of it, skip it?

Screenshots show it just being another interface..Don't see the point of it, may as well use EBV itself.

Hopefully void doesn't bother doing anything like that and works on EBV over some pointless add-on.

[spooky]

What an attitude. I guess hopefully he also doesn't bother doing whatever feature you want that I don't care about? Just kidding, I'm not like that! Hopefully he improves Everything for all of us.

If it wasn't useful, why do you think someone made the plugin in the first place? And whoever made it used the name "Everything" very freely. It'd be better to claim it to have something official and make sure that nobody is doing shady stuff under your software's name. As for "what's the point of it," it's like asking what's the point of Notepad if you can use Visual Studio Code. Not everyone here deals with complex stuff. Abstraction would be a great addition, since the plugin we're talking about is essentially a bridge. It's neither a brand new software nor a new GUI to be built, so you shouldn't 'hope' on someone else's workload to be this or that.

[Herkules97]

Yeah, hopefully he improves EBV itself. It's great software. I never made opposite claim.

If you wanted to add more sureness you could always learn C# and whichever-Chinese and read the source files yourself

Or only C# and use translation.

Or use..."AI".. "Hey can you look over this code from https://github.com/goucey/EverythingExtension and see how it handles user data such as gathering and selling of it?"