Synapse Review - Quick and Easy way to find Applications, Documents and Files

Saturday, December 18, 2010 GNOME , Reviews , Softwares , Softwares-Reviews , Synapse , Ubuntu , Zeitgeist Engine 1 Comments

Synapse is a quick launch application for Linux. It can search for applications, documents, pictures, videos, and other files on your local machine for quick access. Synapse make use of Zeitgeist engine.

Synapse is quite similar to GNOME Do, but is far more powerful. Search capabilities are good and normally shows relevant results. Synapse can be launched by using following short-cut key at anytime:

crtl + space

Once Synapse is launched simply type, search, and go.

Results are sorted per frequency of use. Means that the applications that you use more often will be displayed first.

Plugins are available to find other stuff as well:

• Applications - searches your desktop files
• Banshee - allows you to play/enqueue music files in Banshee
• Commands - runs any command (ie. "sudo apt-get update")
• Devhelp - search documentation using Devhelp
• Dictionary - find definitions of words
• Directory search - allows opening of commonly used directories
• Gnome session - log out, shut down, restart
• Hybrid search - complete Zeitgeist results by searching for similar files
• Rhytmbox - play/enqueue music files in Rhythmbox
• UPower - suspend & hibernate your computer
• Zeitgeist - search anything logged by Zeitgeist

Other than default theme, three more themes are available, shown as follow:

Mini

Virgilio

Dual

Get Synapse

Ubuntu users can get Synapse by using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:synapse-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install synapse

For other distros follow the official link.