Clapgrep: An Easy-to-Use Open Source Linux App To Search Through Your PDFs and Text Documents

Manually searching the contents of a text file can be taxing if you have to do it regularly, across many files.

That is where tools like grep, pdfgrep and ripgrep-all come in, acting as a more efficient way of looking for information, allowing quick and easy searches for specific keywords, strings, or patterns.

However, all of them are CLI-based tools.

How about a GUI-based solution? I found one, and it is called Clapgrep, which looks appealing for its minimal, no-nonsense experience. So, join me as I take you through the latest App Of The Week.

Clapgrep: Superfast Text Searches

As a Rust and Python-based application, Clapgrep is a powerful, open source search tool for Linux that can be used to search through multiple types of files in a specified directory.

It is a GUI front-end for ripgrep.

If you look closely, the logo and name for the app are derived from Claptrap, the big-mouth robots from the Borderlands series of games (the movie doesn't count).

⭐ Key Features

Clapgrep offers fast searches for text, PDFs, and common office document files, with relevant metadata such as page and line numbers being shown after a successful search query.

Some of its highlights include:

• Supports Regex
• Actively Developed
• Intuitive User Interface

💻 User Experience

I ran it on my Fedora 40 system by using the official flatpak without any issues. The interface was easy to get acquainted with, and the search results were fairly simple to understand.

After setting a search path where some demo text files were stored, I searched for the term “floopy” and Clapgrep found me the file and the lines where that term was mentioned. I could even directly open the file by clicking on the title and selecting one of the installed text editors.

I then took things up a notch by enabling the “Case Sensitive” search option and entered the term “What the dog doin?”. Clapgrep showed me the exact lines where that term was mentioned in a text file.

Searching for code is straightforward too, with a dedicated “Disable Regex” option for turning off regular expression searches. As you can see below, I had to disable it to search for a specific line in a Python file for a snake game.

In my testing, I missed EPUB support. It would have been great if Clapgrep could do that. It would make searching for passages in a book much easier.

I highly recommend this application for users who prefer a GUI app over a terminal app.

⚙️ Installing Clapgrep on Linux

The most recent release of Clapgrep can be found on Flathub, with the GitHub repo containing the source code for those looking to build manually or contribute to the project.

Suggested Read 📖

ripgrep-all Command in Linux: One grep to Rule Them All

rga, called ripgrep-all, is an excellent tool that allows you to search almost all files for a text pattern. While the OG grep command is limited to plaintext files, rga can search for text in a wide range of file types such as PDF, e-Books, Word documents, zip, tar, and

It's FOSSPratham Patel

Here's why you should opt for It's FOSS Plus Membership

• Even the biggest players in the Linux world don't care about desktop Linux users. We do.
• We don't put content behind paywall. Your support keeps it open for everyone. Think of it like 'pay it forward'.
• Don't like ads? With the Plus membership, you get an ad-free reading experience.
• When millions of AI-generated content is being published daily, you read and learn from real human Linux users.
• It costs just $2 a month, less than the cost of your favorite burger.