Everything adjustable in SearchBox lives on one page: click the gear icon in the top-right of the home screen. This guide walks the sections in the order they appear, with a plain-English note on when you'd actually touch each one.
Your local login — remember, this account exists only on your PC.
- Email — the address you signed up with (shown for reference).
- Recovery Key — click Generate Recovery Key to create and download a fresh spare key. Do this if you've lost the one from setup, then store it somewhere safe. Why this matters →
- Change Password — updates your login password. Because the vault is encrypted with your password, SearchBox handles re-securing it as part of the change.
- Sign Out — logs you out of this browser/window session.
The health panel for your encrypted vault.
- Normally it shows Vault Active — files are encrypted at rest.
- After a restart it shows Vault locked with a password box — type your password and click Unlock. This re-lock is a security feature, not a bug (explained here).
- Reset Vault permanently deletes everything in the vault. It asks you to type
RESETbecause there's no undo.
SearchBox's search smarts come from a small companion program (Meilisearch) that runs quietly alongside the app. You'll rarely need this section — it exists for when search stops responding.
- Status — whether the search engine is running, with start/stop controls.
- Binary Path — where the Meilisearch program lives. Installed versions of SearchBox include it automatically; only fill this in if you're running a custom setup.
- Port — the local "door number" it listens on (default 7700). Change it only if another program on your PC already uses that port.
- Auto-start — keep this on so the engine starts with SearchBox.
💡 Tip: If searches suddenly return nothing, come here first — see Troubleshooting.
The optional, fully local AI features — result summaries and smarter suggestions. Off by default.
- Enable AI Search — the master switch.
- Ollama settings — Server URL (usually
http://localhost:11434), Model (which AI model to use), Timeout, Auto-connect, plus a Connection Status check and a list of Available Models once connected.
Setting this up from scratch? Follow the AI summaries with Ollama tutorial — it covers installing Ollama and picking a model.
🔒 The AI runs on your own machine. Turning this on does not send your files, searches, or anything else to the internet.
One switch: Enable Bookmarks. Turns the five home-screen tiles on or off.
The list of folders SearchBox is watching, with controls to add more, remove one, or Sync to pick up recent changes — the same controls as the upload window's Index Folder tab. Details in Folders and archives.
For people who download with qBittorrent: switch on Enable Integration, fill in the Host, Port, Username, and Password of qBittorrent's Web UI, and SearchBox will index your finished downloads so they're searchable like everything else. The Connection Status row confirms it's talking to qBittorrent.
🔒 The password you enter here is stored encrypted on disk, not as plain text.
If you don't use qBittorrent, leave this off and forget it exists.
- AI Enhancement — when your local AI is set up, lets it improve the suggested searches on the home screen.
- Website & interactive demo — opens the built-in demo page (View demo). It's served from inside the app, so even the demo doesn't touch the internet.
- Automatically check for updates — off by default. When on, SearchBox asks GitHub once at startup whether a newer version exists. This is the only time SearchBox ever phones out, and only if you opt in.
- Software updates — Check for updates on demand; if there's a newer release, Update now downloads the installer, verifies it, and launches it. (On Linux there's no in-app installer — you'll get a link to the releases page instead.)
