Screenshots & videos
About
A macOS spotlight like search tool that allows you to quickly search your desktop. It supports searching and opening apps and files as well as doing quick calculations. For additional convenience it can run in background to always be available via the simple keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Space. Features: Detective requires advanced permissions to properly find and launch applications on the host system. For this reason and for your information warnings might be shown on the app page in your app store. - Search for and open applications - Search for files and open them in the right apps - Do quick maths just by typing an expression - Run in background and quickly launch with Ctrl + Space or Super + l
Changelog
- Fixes icons for some (especially flatpak) apps not showing - Fixes a small visual glitch that caused the background of the search view to have a slightly different color - App results sorting now takes recently launched apps into account - Improved finding installed apps - Detective will now find apps that were installed while it is running - Limit file results to 50 for a snappier experience - The window will now show faster - Improve search responsiveness by only delaying by 100ms after keystrokes
Additional information
- Developer
- Leonhard
- License
- GPL-3.0-or-later
- Category
- System Tools
- Homepage
- https://github.com/leolost2605/detective
- Available via
- elementary AppCenter (Flatpak)
- Catalog data as of
- 9/3/2026 (dataset snapshot date — per-app update dates aren't tracked yet)