sist2
Lightning-fast file system indexer and search tool.
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GitHub repository information
Fetched · June 5, 2026 ★ 1,267 Updated: June 1, 2026
README
[](https://www.codefactor.io/repository/github/sist2app/sist2)
[](https://files.simon987.net/.gate/sist2/simon987_sist2/)
**Demo**: [sist2.simon987.net](https://sist2.simon987.net/)
**Community URL:** [Discord](https://discord.gg/2PEjDy3Rfs)
# sist2
sist2 (Simple incremental search tool)
*Warning: sist2 is in early development*
## Features
* Fast, low memory usage, multi-threaded
* Manage & schedule scan jobs with simple web interface (Docker only)
* Mobile-friendly Web interface
* Extracts text and metadata from common file types \*
* Generates thumbnails \*
* Incremental scanning
* Manual tagging from the UI and automatic tagging based on file attributes via [user scripts](docs/scripting.md)
* Recursive scan inside archive files \*\*
* OCR support with tesseract \*\*\*
* Stats page & disk utilisation visualization
* Named-entity recognition (client-side) \*\*\*\*
\* See [format support](#format-support)
\*\* See [Archive files](#archive-files)
\*\*\* See [OCR](#ocr)
\*\*\*\* See [Named-Entity Recognition](#NER)
## Getting Started
### Using Docker Compose *(Windows/Linux/Mac)*
```yaml
services:
elasticsearch:
image: elasticsearch:7.17.9
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
# This directory must have 1000:1000 permissions (or update PUID & PGID below)
- /data/sist2-es-data/:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data
environment:
- "discovery.type=single-node"
- "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms2g -Xmx2g"
- "PUID=1000"
- "PGID=1000"
sist2-admin:
image: sist2app/sist2:x64-linux
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- /data/sist2-admin-data/:/sist2-admin/
- /<path to index>/:/host
ports:
- 4090:4090
# NOTE: Don't expose this port publicly!
- 8080:8080
working_dir: /root/sist2-admin/
entrypoint: python3
command:
- /root/sist2-admin/sist2_admin/app.py
```
Navigate to http://localhost:8080/ to configure sist2-admin.
### Using the executable file *(Linux/WSL only)*
1. Choose search backend (See [comparison](#search-backends)):
* **Elasticsearch**: have an Elasticsearch (version >= 6.8.X, ideally >=7.14.0) instance running
1. Download [from official website](https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch)
2. *(or)* Run using docker:
```bash
docker run -d -p 9200:9200 -e "discovery.type=single-node" elasticsearch:7.17.9
```
* **SQLite**: No installation required
2. Download the [latest sist2 release](https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/releases).
Select the file corresponding to your CPU architecture and mark the binary as executable with `chmod +x`.
3. See [usage guide](docs/USAGE.md) for command line usage.
Example usage:
1. Scan a directory: `sist2 scan ~/Documents --output ./documents.sist2`
2. Prepare search index:
* **Elasticsearch**: `sist2 index --es-url http://localhost:9200 ./documents.sist2`
* **SQLite**: `sist2 sqlite-index --search-index ./search.sist2 ./documents.sist2`
3. Start web interface:
* **Elasticsearch**: `sist2 web ./documents.sist2`
* **SQLite**: `sist2 web --search-index ./search.sist2 ./documents.sist2`
## Format support
| File type | Library | Content | Thumbnail | Metadata |
|:--------------------------------------------------------------------------|:-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|:---------|:------------|:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| pdf,xps,fb2,epub | MuPDF | text+ocr | yes | author, title |
| cbz,cbr | [libscan](https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/tree/master/third-party/libscan) | - | yes | - |
| `audio/*` | ffmpeg | - | yes | ID3 tags |
| `video/*` | ffmpeg | - | yes | title, comment, artist |
| `image/*` | ffmpeg | ocr | yes | [Common EXIF tags](https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/blob/efdde2734eca9b14a54f84568863b7ffd59bdba3/src/parsing/media.c#L190), GPS tags |
| raw, rw2, dng, cr2, crw, dcr, k25, kdc, mrw, pef, xf3, arw, sr2, srf, erf | LibRaw | no | yes | Common EXIF tags, GPS tags |
| ttf,ttc,cff,woff,fnt,otf | Freetype2 | - | yes, `bmp` | Name & style |
| `text/plain` | [libscan](https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/tree/master/third-party/libscan) | yes | no | - |
| html, xml | [libscan](https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/tree/master/third-party/libscan) | yes | no | - |
| tar, zip, rar, 7z, ar ... | Libarchive | yes\* | - | no |
| docx, xlsx, pptx | [libscan](https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/tree/master/third-party/libscan) | yes | if embedded | creator, modified_by, title |
| doc (MS Word 97-2003) | antiword | yes | no | author, title |
| mobi, azw, azw3 | libmobi | yes | yes | author, title |
| wpd (WordPerfect) | libwpd | yes | no | *planned* |
| json, jsonl, ndjson | [libscan](https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/tree/master/third-party/libscan) | yes | - | - |
\* *See [Archive files](#archive-files)*
### Archive files
**sist2** will scan files stored into archive files (zip, tar, 7z...) as if they were directly in the file system.
Recursive (archives inside archives)
scan is also supported.
**Limitations**:
* Support for parsing media files with formats that require *seek* (e.g. `.gif`, `.mp4` w/ fragmented metadata etc.)
is limitted (see `--mem-buffer` option)
* Archive files are scanned sequentially, by a single thread. On systems where
**sist2** is not I/O bound, scans might be faster when larger archives are split into smaller parts.
### OCR
You can enable OCR support for ebook (pdf,xps,fb2,epub) or image file types with the
`--ocr-lang <lang>` option in combination with `--ocr-images` and/or `--ocr-ebooks`.
Download the language data files with your package manager (`apt install tesseract-ocr-eng`) or
directly [from Github](https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/wiki/Data-Files).
The `sist2app/sist2` image comes with common languages
(hin, jpn, eng, fra, rus, spa, chi_sim, deu, pol) pre-installed.
You can use the `+` separator to specify multiple languages. The language
name must be identical to the `*.traineddata` file installed on your system
(use `chi_sim` rather than `chi-sim`).
Examples:
```bash
sist2 scan --ocr-ebooks --ocr-lang jpn ~/Books/Manga/
sist2 scan --ocr-images --ocr-lang eng ~/Images/Screenshots/
sist2 scan --ocr-ebooks --ocr-images --ocr-lang eng+chi_sim ~/Chinese-Bilingual/
```
### Search backends
sist2 v3.0.7+ supports SQLite search backend. The SQLite search backend has
fewer features and generally comparable query performance for medium-size
indices, but it uses much less memory and is easier to set up.
| | SQLite | Elasticsearch |
|----------------------------------------------|:---------------------------------------------------:|:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------:|
| Requires separate search engine installation | | ✓ |
| Memory footprint | ~20MB | >500MB |
| Query syntax | [fts5](https://www.sqlite.org/fts5.html) | [query_string](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-query-string-query.html#query-string-syntax) |
| Fuzzy search | | ✓ |
| Media Types tree real-time updating | | ✓ |
| Manual tagging | ✓ | ✓ |
| User scripts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Media Type breakdown for search results | | ✓ |
| Embeddings search | ✓ *O(n)* | ✓ *O(logn)* |
### NER
sist2 v3.0.4+ supports named-entity recognition (NER). Simply add a supported repository URL to
**Configuration** > **Machine learning options** > **Model repositories**
to enable it.
The text processing is done in your browser, no data is sent to any third-party services.
See [sist2app/sist2-ner-models](https://github.com/sist2app/sist2-ner-models) for more details.
#### List of available repositories:
| URL | Maintainer | Purpose |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------|---------|
| [sist2app/sist2-ner-models](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sist2app/sist2-ner-models/main/repo.json) | [sist2app](https://github.com/sist2app) | General |
<details>
<summary>Screenshot</summary>
</details>
## Build from source
You can compile **sist2** by yourself if you don't want to use the pre-compiled binaries
### Using docker
```bash
git clone --recursive https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/
cd sist2
docker build . -t my-sist2-image
# Copy sist2 executable from docker image
docker run --rm --entrypoint cat my-sist2-image /root/sist2 > sist2-x64-linux
```
### Using a linux computer
1. Install compile-time dependencies
```bash
apt install gcc g++ python3 yasm ragel automake autotools-dev wget libtool libssl-dev curl zip unzip tar xorg-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libxcursor-dev libxml2-dev libxinerama-dev gettext nasm git nodejs
```
2. Install vcpkg using my fork: https://github.com/sist2app/vcpkg
3. Install vcpkg dependencies
```bash
vcpkg install openblas curl[core,openssl] sqlite3[core,fts5,json1] cpp-jwt pcre cjson brotli libarchive[core,bzip2,libxml2,lz4,lzma,lzo] pthread tesseract libxml2 libmupdf[ocr] gtest mongoose libmagic libraw gumbo ffmpeg[core,avcodec,avformat,swscale,swresample,webp,opus,mp3lame,vpx,zlib] libgit2[core,pcre]
```
4. Build
```bash
git clone --recursive https://github.com/sist2app/sist2/
(cd sist2-vue; npm install; npm run build)
(cd sist2-admin/frontend; npm install; npm run build)
cmake -DSIST_DEBUG=off -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=<VCPKG_ROOT>/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake .
make
```
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