About Beagle
Beagle is a search tool that lets you search in your personal information space.
More technically, Beagle is a Linux desktop-independent service which transparently and unobtrusively keeps track of your data and provides searching and indexing capabilities.
- Changes to data are indexed in real time.
- Files are immediately indexed when they are created, are re-indexed when they are modified, and are dropped from the index upon deletion.
- E-mails are indexed upon arrival.
- IM conversations are indexed as you chat, a line at a time.
- Web pages are indexed as you view them.
Beagle supports many different data sources and file formats. A complete list can be found on the Supported Filetypes page.
When you search using Beagle, you search all of the text and metadata contained inside your documents. Any information that can be extracted from your data is available to you. You can search for your MP3 files by artist, your emails by person, and all your documents by keyword.
Beagle uses the Lucene indexing system from the Apache project and the prodigious Doug Cutting, ported to .NET by George Aroush.
Today Beagle is gaining momentum in Linux desktop applications, ranging from KDE's Kerry Beagle search tool, to GNOME's Nautilus file manager and Yelp help browser, to the Deskbar quick search interface, to the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop main menu. See the full list of apps using Beagle.
Beagle includes a GNOME-based graphical tool and a web based interface for searching its indexes. It also provides programming interfaces (in C#, C, and Python) so that any application can plug into Beagle's searching and indexing power. Beagle provides an implementation of the Xesam specification for desktop search through its Xesam adaptor.
Some of the other cool features are:
- RDF interface (for only querying)
- Search remote beagle services in the network
- Index removable drives and media
- Index XMP sidecar files in the filesystem
To start using Beagle, visit our Getting Started page.
