Heimdall 1.0.4

This one's almost entirely from your issues, thank you all :)

New

• The Windows key can open Heimdall. Type settings, select Hotkey, press Enter and then tap Win on its own. Heimdall opens instead of the Start menu, and shortcuts like Win + E or Win + R still work like normal. No AutoHotkey needed. (#9)
• Control Panel search. Type things like power options, credential manager, firewall or user accounts. It reads the same list Explorer shows, so it's in your language and panels your drivers add (NVIDIA, Intel and so on) show up too. (#8)
• Pin to top. Right-click any app, file or folder and pick Pin to top, pinned items sit above your recent ones when the search box is empty. (#10)
• Clear recent items and Clear search on close, both on the settings page. Clearing keeps your pins. (#10)
• Quick notes. Type note call the dentist and it's added to a Markdown file with the date and time. It goes to Documents\Heimdall notes.md by default, or point notes in the config at your Obsidian inbox:

notes = 'D:\Vault\Inbox.md'

(#6)

Install

Download Heimdall-1.0.4-x64-setup.exe below and run it. If you already have Heimdall, just run it over the top, your settings stay as they are.

With Scoop, scoop update heimdall picks it up.

Heimdall 1.0.3

Another quick one, mostly from your comments and issues :)

New

• Leave folders and drives out of search. A few of you asked for this one. Add them to exclude in the config (type Open config file in Heimdall), and they're left out of every search:

exclude = ['D:', 'C:\Windows', 'node_modules']

A drive leaves out the whole drive, a path leaves out that folder, and a plain name like node_modules leaves out every folder with that name. You can also do it for a single search by typing -in:, like notes -in:node_modules or report -in:"C:\Program Files".

• Corners. Type settings and pick round (the default), windows (the same smaller radius Windows 11 uses) or square. (#5)
• Animations can be turned off, so opening, resizing and moving the selection all happen instantly. (#5)

Install

Download Heimdall-1.0.3-x64-setup.exe below and run it, then press Alt+Space. If you already have Heimdall, just run it over the top, your settings stay as they are.

With Scoop, scoop update heimdall picks it up.

Heimdall 1.0.2

A small release with two important fixes, thanks to everyone who reported them :)

Fixes

• The hotkey no longer stops working after the first press. If you had a maximized window open on a screen without a visible taskbar (auto-hide, or a second monitor), game mode thought it was a fullscreen game and released the hotkey. Maximized windows are now ignored, while real fullscreen games and videos still release it.
• Upgrading keeps the file indexer running. Installing over an older version could leave the indexer service stopped, which made Heimdall fall back to indexing by itself and use a lot more memory. If your indexer got stopped by the 1.0.1 upgrade, installing 1.0.2 brings it back.

New

• Base64. Type b64 hello to encode or b64d aGVsbG8= to decode, and Enter copies the result. (#3)
• Scoop support. You can now install and update Heimdall with Scoop:

scoop bucket add heimdall https://github.com/Kryzern/Heimdall
scoop install heimdall/heimdall

Install

Download Heimdall-1.0.2-x64-setup.exe below and run it, then press Alt+Space. If you already have Heimdall, just run it over the top, your settings stay as they are.

Heimdall 1.0.1

Thank you all for the feedback on 1.0.0, most of this update came straight from your comments and issues :)

Install: download Heimdall-1.0.1-x64-setup.exe and run it. Windows will ask for admin once, which is for the fast file indexer service. Then press Alt+Space.

What's new

• Alt+Space is now the default hotkey, and you can change it from inside Heimdall. Just type settings
• A settings page for the hotkey, theme, glass, shadow, tray icon and starting with Windows
• A tray icon, so there's always an easy way to get to settings or quit
• Windows settings search: type bluetooth, dark mode, display, uninstall and so on
• A right-click menu on results: Open with, Open file location, Copy path, Properties and Run as administrator (Shift+F10 and Alt+Enter work too)
• More filters like type:image, type:video and type:code, plus a ? page that lists all of them
• An adjustable shadow (normal, soft or off), and a cleaner light mode
• Heimdall finally has a proper icon everywhere in Windows
• The installer sets up the indexer service for you now
• Single letter searches are over 2x faster (29 ms down to 11 ms on 3.77 million files), so Heimdall now beats Everything on every query in the benchmark

If you're updating from 1.0.0 your config is kept, so your hotkey stays whatever you had it set to. You can change it in settings :)

Prefer no installer? Download Heimdall-1.0.1-x64.zip, unzip it, and run install.ps1 (right-click, then Run with PowerShell).

Requires Windows 10 or 11, x64.

A quick note on VirusTotal: the installer currently gets flagged by 4 out of 70 vendors (Arctic Wolf, DeepInstinct, SecureAge and Skyhigh). These are all AI-based scanners that guess from what a file looks like, and unsigned Inno Setup installers get flagged by them quite often because the compressed installer data looks "obfuscated" to them. Windows Defender and the other big ones don't flag it. I'm reporting it as a false positive, and I'm also applying for free code signing so future releases shouldn't get flagged like this. The whole source is right here, so you can always check it or build it yourself :)

Heimdall 1.0.0

First release.

Install: download Heimdall-1.0.0-x64-setup.exe and run it. It installs for your user only, so no admin is needed. Press F5 to open Heimdall.

Recommended: tick Install the fast file indexer service in the installer. It needs one admin prompt and makes file search faster and lighter on memory.

Uninstall from Settings > Apps.

Prefer no installer? Download Heimdall-1.0.0-x64.zip, unzip it, and run install.ps1 (right-click, then Run with PowerShell). Use install.ps1 -Indexer to add the indexer service.

What's in the zip

• heimdall.exe: the launcher (1.2 MB)
• heimdall-indexer.exe: the optional indexer service
• heimdall-bench.exe: the benchmark from the README
• install.ps1 and uninstall.ps1

Requires Windows 10 or 11, x64.