Guides · for everyone · updated August 2026
Find a file when all you remember is a phrase inside it.
Type the phrase (a name, an address, a sentence you wrote) and Interlinked Files returns every file on your computer containing it, in milliseconds. The file's name never matters, which is good, because it's probably scan_0417.pdf.
Why this beats every other way of looking
The files people actually lose are the ones whose names say nothing: bank exports, scanner output, email attachments, drafts named final-v3 (2).pdf. No amount of name-searching finds those. But you almost always remember something from inside, and the inside is searchable, if something has read the files ahead of time.
It reads everything once, so you never wait
After install, Interlinked Files indexes the text of every PDF, note, and code file on the machine. From then on a search is a lookup, not a read: about 8 ms across the whole computer.
The match shows its line
Results show the sentence around your phrase, so ten similar files are tellable apart at a glance. No opening each one to check.
Related files come along
Files carry their company: the quote sheet that was always edited next to the contract, the photos saved the same day. When one file matches, the ones that belong with it surface too, including files your phrase never appears in.
Common questions
Can I find a file by a sentence inside it instead of its name?
Yes, that's exactly what content search does. Type the phrase as you remember it; every file containing it appears, with the matching line shown. File names never enter into it, which is the point: most files worth finding have names that tell you nothing.
What kinds of files can be searched by their contents?
PDFs, plain-text files (notes, logs, exports, .txt/.md), and code. Word and Excel files are found by name and by their connections to other files rather than by inner text.
Do I need the exact phrase, word for word?
You need a phrase that actually appears in the file, in order: 'henderson contract' finds files containing exactly that phrase. If you're unsure of the wording, search the single most distinctive word you're confident about (a surname, a project name, an amount) and narrow from the results.
How long does a search across the whole computer take?
About 8 milliseconds for a whole-machine content search on an indexed system, measured on a machine with 4.47 million files. The reading work happened once, when the index was built; your search only looks things up.
Everything local is free forever, no card. Download for Windows · related: search inside PDFs.