Desktop search is the name for the field of search tools which search the contents of a user's own computer files, rather than searching the Internet. These tools are designed to find information on the user's PC, including web browser histories, e-mail archives, text documents, sound files, images and video.

One of the main advantages of desktop search programs is that search results arrive in a few seconds; Windows search companion "can be some help, but it searches through Windows files and folders only, not e-mail or contact databases, and unless you enable the Indexing Service (in Windows 2000 or XP), the Windows search tool is extremely slow." Windows Vista enables the indexing service by default.

A variety of desktop search programs are now available.

Desktop search is emerging as a concern for large firms for two main reasons: untapped productivity and security. A commonly cited statistic states that 80% of a company's data is locked up inside unstructured data — the information stored on an end user's PC, the files and directories they've created on a network, documents stored in repositories such as corporate intranets and a multitude of other locations. Moreover, many companies have structured or unstructured information stored in older file formats to which they don't have ready access.

Google Desktop Search 5.9