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The eSearch Project was initiated in 2023 with the goal of creating an alternative to dtSearch Desktop tailored for the European market. Our focus was on building a user interface that is easily 'user' translatable and modern in design. Due to licensing constraints, we selected the open-source and well-established Lucene .NET search engine.
To provide a contemporary user experience, we adopted the open-source Avalonia framework, using an MVVM architecture and targeting the latest version of .NET Core. The default UI supports dark mode for a modern look and feel.
Traditional Boolean AND, OR, NOT operators can easily be entered using buttons. For stemming, users can choose between the traditional Porter English stemmer or our multilingual stemming rules, originally developed for dtSearch. For phonic search (as known in dtSearch), we implement standard Soundex rules. For synonyms, we utilize the same rules created for the User Thesaurus Plus add-on for dtSearch. Beyond these features we added a much improved word list, with better sorting, and more intelligent handling of emails, dates, etc.
For details of features and functionality see the PDF Article: Introducing eSearch Pro
We introduced a plugin architecture to support indexing from additional data sources such as Amazon S3, Dropbox, SharePoint, and more.The plugin API will be published to enable third-party development of plugins for external data sources. These may be distributed as community plugins, similar to the model used by the Obsidian application, which distinguishes between core and community plugins.
In April 2025 we released an AWS S3 plugin, this also connects to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 bucket as a demonstration.
As large language models (LLMs) rapidly evolved and gained commercial relevance, we introduced an AI Mode in late 2024. This mode supports connections to the Perplexity API, OpenAI API, OpenRouter.ai and a customizable option for any other OpenAI-compatible API, whether online or offline.
A particular strength is that Custom mode can run multiple offline LLMs on your own PC or local area network. The August 2025 release added Ollama and LM Studio local server connections to the Service dropdown selector. LLMs can be set up with different system prompts to define an assistants role and some context, so that users can choose which assistant to work with for specialised tasks e.g. translator, research assistant, accountant.
Users can save conversations in plain text or export them as JSON, CSV or ECONV format, all of which can be imported by others on the network or indexed and searched later. IT Admins can periodically index and search conversations to monitor usage. Users can add notes to any part of the conversation - system, user, assistant - to provide feedback.
We aim to expand these AI capabilities as the field continues to mature.
In June 2025 the MCP Client was introduced to allow Tool access to the LLMs.
In addition to the main eSearch Pro desktop application, we developed a portable version for use on USB drives. The standard version is ideal for eDiscovery, allowing searches on machines without requiring software installation. A variant is for publishing search-only data (Operating Manuals, eBibles, etc.)
The TARILIO commercial version has additional code and license to facilitate distribution of search-only (no indexing) versions within an organization or more widely. Contact support@electronart.co.uk with your distribution needs for further details.
For enterprise environments, eSearch supports a command line interface that allow IT administrators to restrict user capabilities. These restrictions can limit users to searching existing indexes or querying LLMs, without the ability to create new indexes, modify LLM connections, or change configuration settings.
The eSearch Project is open-sourced under a modified Apache 2.0 license. The eSearch Pro, Lite and Portable versions are free for personal, non-commercial use. A TARILIO branded version is available for commercial use.
eSearch Pro 1.1.9357 (Released 14 August 2025)
eSearch Portable 1.1.9357 (Released 14 August 2025)
For feedback, support and licensing enquiries contact: support@electronart.co.uk
Beta version signup & downloads visit: 👉 https://searchcloudone.com/universal-desktop-search/
Release Notes: https://searchcloudone.com/release-notes-esearch/
For comparisons and reviews see: https://sourceforge.net/software/product/eSearch-Pro/
Articles featuring eSearch Pro in AI Mode: https://dark-mode.medium.com/
12 August 2025.