Hi,
I am currently contemplating whether I want to use DEVONthink or not? One argument of DT in favour is the ability to search file content. So I was wondering, whether anyone knows a reliable alternative for iOS? I had a play around with Samurai Search. But that did not go too well.
Hmm, I don’t have a clear or exact answer but it appears that with iPadOS 17 beta more file contents are indexed and searched than previously. Some of these may have been indexed before but some are new. I’m seeing results from text/html/markdown files in app folders for Notebooks, iA Writer and Textastic. Also showing results for pdfs, Numbers and Pages documents.
I’m fairly certain that the indexing I’m seeing is new and improved. I’m sure it’s not on par with an app like DEVONthink but this is exciting for those of us that want to rely on the Files app for searching on the iPad.
This may be useful for your purposes:
I have had good results from it after it has had the opportunity to index the files.
PDF Search is quite promising but rather buggy, often crashing during indexing. I find easySearch a more reliable aleternative.
Thanks for the replies! I will check both apps out. And I am curious for iOS 17.
Anything in Dropbox (paid account) has full text search on iOS.
Thanks! Glad that Dropbox offers it.
Hope that Apple will do the same at some point. I recently checked for a word on iOS 16 that word showed up in OCR’ed photos but not PDF content (I definitely had a PDF with the word).
Nice, it appears I have already got this app. Now I don’t recall why I do not use it 
Will give it another try.
I updated my iPad to the dev beta yesterday. Indexing and finding PDF content is quite a bit better now! A pity Apple does not mention it.
Marketing knows the majority of people are more interested in emoji, memoji, stickers, and widgets. 
No problem. I’m going to write a blog post about it. At least 6 people will know all about it. 
Make it 7 
. Just subscribed to your blog on Reeder.
Edit: Well, I kinda know from this thread. So back to 6 
I would like to distinguish between searching content from within a document and searching from Spotlight or the Files app.
On iOS 16 (I don’t have 17) I can search within documents, including .pdf and find a word or phrase. But, from a Spotlight or Files search I can only find a word or phrase if it is in the file name.
So, in iOS 17 are you seeing content results before you actually open a file?
Correct. Text content of files is now searchable from the Files app search field. I’m not sure if that it’s 100% for all documents but in my various checks thus far it seems fairly consistent across text, html, markdown, pdf, images, Pages, Numbers, etc. Seems to be a fairly complete index.
That is great! Thanks!
Samuri Search and easySearch.
Any hints if something improved with iOS18 also? Sesrch for PDF file content works for some words but not yet reliable for all content it seems.
@Denny Did you eventually write the blog post?
I did not! As I recall I started writing it but at the time there was no clear indicator to me as to when search would work or not. It seemed to work for some documents and not others depending on document type and the apps documents were associated with. I’ve re-added to my list of posts-to-write along with the link to this thread. If/when I get it written I’ll post back here!
I have been looking for a solution to this as well. I currently have some PDFs in Google Drive. The search works great, I can find search terms in both the file name and file contents. It is a shame the Files app cannot do the same on iOS when searching my iCloud Drive. I’ll bookmark his thread and hope someone finds a solution.
Edit: I should mention this works in Google Drive, but I have been looking at options to move to iCloud Drive.