Status update and roadmap of Listary from Channing

general
#1

Hello everyone!

It’s Channing here. First I’d like to thank you all for being supportive since the very beginning, especially after I disappeared for the last few years. Recently there are some concerns about Listary, like if it has been sold or abandoned, and I’d like to address them with an open attitude.

The current status

Listary is still maintained by me, and I have no plan to sell it at all (I’ve turned down many proposals).

We now have a clear and big plan for Listary and are putting more time and energy into it. I’m developing it actively during my part-time.

@xinyi joined the team last month. She is now the full-time product manager of Listary. She is breaking down our roadmap into product features, which you should see shortly. If you have any questions or suggestions, just post here or drop us an email, she’ll try her best to provide a solution :slight_smile:

We’re also hiring part-time developers for this big goal.

Roadmap

We’ll continue focusing on providing the best search experience.

A solid foundation

Our priority is to build a solid foundation for Listary 6 and future versions, like improving stability and reducing memory usage for disk search, adding some key lacking features of v5 back, fixing known issues, etc.

Openness

We’d like to make Listary more open and flexible. Including:

  • An open mechanism to integrate 3rd party file managers and applications, so users (or even official developers) can bring the power of their favorite apps and Listary together.
  • A hub to share commands, actions, themes, etc.
  • An extension system to index more kinds of things (like emails, notes, or even file contents) instead of only file names.

Intelligence

We know you like Ctrl+G so we’ll provide more features similar to it. In many situations, you don’t even need to type the search query, Listary will guess what you need (based on for example what you’re doing at the moment and your habits) to provide you smart suggestions.

If you have any suggestions about Listary 6, feel free to post them here.

We’re also looking for a more sustainable business model for Listary and would like to hear your thoughts. No worries, we’ll not migrate you to a subscription model :smiley:

10 Likes
#2

Thanks, @Channing. This is welcome news. Best wishes to you and @xinyi.

3 Likes
#3

Suggestion: That the Listary code is hosted on Github, so that many people can contribute to the project.

  • I would like to see Listary with rounded corners and dark theme (these features are trendy in Windows 11).
  • That the updates are more frequent, because now we are waiting more than 3 months to see a new version.
  • Maybe a browser extension to search more quickly through history, bookmarks, tabs etc.
2 Likes
#4

Regarding a sustainable business model, I’d suggest to do something like what LINQPad does. They charge for each major version which is released every 2-4 years.

1 Like
Listary 6 Beta :tada:
#5

Regarding the concerns it would help if twitter accounts @UseListary and @ChanningDai would show any activity and an explanation for why signing keys for Listary have changed.

Thanks :pray:

3 Likes
#6

Yes, this would bring additional assurance. Thanks, @Channing !

1 Like
#7

Thanks for the update, Channing. :clap:

#8

Hello Channing,
Thank you for status and roadmap.
Would it be possible to add - exclude/ Ignore certain file types in the search results Examples could be .jpg .mov .mp3 .docx from being indexed. (Not showing in search results) Maybe add a field box that could type in the extensions to be Ignored?
What would be your thoughts on this?
Thank you for this wonderful software.

#9

This feature is already existing in Feature → File Search → Priorities, where you use regex to describe the pattern of file names.

#10

Hello Channing,

Thank you for continuing to develop this fantastic and, for me, indispensable tool.

I would like to make two suggestions for improvement:

  1. It would be very helpful if there was an option that when adding a new folder (via the favourites star in the menu), this new folder would not be added at the end of the list, but at the beginning.
    Reason: when the Listary Folder menu opens, the mouse is at the top of the menu and to avoid long mouse movements (I am lazy), I place the currently most frequently used folders there. If I add a new, currently frequently used folder, now I have to go to the settings each time and move this new folder to the top.
    If there was an option to add new folders to the top of the menu, it would be a bit quicker.

  2. I very often use the folders from the history.
    Here it would be very helpful to be able to place this folder at the top of the menu and if necessary even display the items in the menu directly, i.e. without “History” subfolder (as in an earlier version of Listary).
    So both of these are of course only options here, too, for users who want them. By default, most users will certainly prefer the current solution.

It would be great if these two points were taken into account. But of course they are not must-haves.

Martin

#11

I noticed you’re quite active on Weibo, which is one of the social networking services you’ve linked to from listary.com.

https://weibo.com/u/6371340585

However, your activity on Twitter/similar, has been almost nonexistent. One thing I like to ask - is if you could possibly move your SN comms to Twitter/similar?

Weibo is a bit too Chinese/China-mainland-centric, whereas ‘Western’ platforms are a bit more open to the entire world.

I tried to sign up on Weibo, but it doesn’t make it easy for foreigners to do so, eventually, I gave up.

1 Like
#12

Hello DiamondbacK,

Using version 6

I am new to this and if i could ask you please how do i go about exclude/Ignore certain file types in the search results and being indexed. I have had a go with no luck.

I went to File Search, then Priorites tab, then i think i have add a string to the Ignored?
I am trying to exclude from the indexing and search results, some examples are .jpg .mov .mp3 .docx

I have looked around in the web regex to exclude but the strings i have tryed do not work, or i am not doing it the right way. Can you please help with an example?

Thank you in advanced

#13

Click the button at the bottom with a funnel icon, then you should see an Add Rule popup window with 2 options which are File name (regex) and Priorty. Type in a regex string \.(jpg|mov|mp3|docx)$ for the first option and select Ignored for the second. That’s all. In the regex, \. matches a dot . in the file name, and $ matches the end position.

1 Like
#16

Hi DiamondbacK
Thank for your reply. I have done further testing and .jpg,mp3, all show up in the search and not excluded.
.docx shows up when you type filename and part of the files extension, example filename.do
I guess Listary has some bug? So i should now show Channing this report to investigate.

Thanks again for your help

#17

No problem.

1 Like
#19

Sure! I’ve just started using Twitter again :rofl: It’s an important channel to get in touch with users all around the world.

1 Like
#20

Seems to be a bug. We’ll look into it.

#21

Thanks for the suggestions.

  1. For users with lots of favorites, adding new items at the top may be more natural. I’m considering making this the default behavior.
  2. It could be helpful to show a few (like 2 or 3) history entries directly in the menu. Let me think about this.
#22

When the time comes regarding moving to a sustainable business model, do you still intend to honor the license agreement of the users who purchased a license under the “lifetime updates/upgrades” license?

#23

Can this new Beta version of Listary handle the problem with Windows 11 Explorer, where it seems to get lost not knowing at which tab it is? Just to make sure I do not get through the whole procedure of installing and uninstalling in vain.
Thank you for your time on this project and all questions ensuing :slightly_smiling_face: