FAQ

Go to gumroad.com and click on the “Login” button in the top right. On the following page, click the “Sign up” link at the top of the page. Now fill in your email address and password in the fields further below on the page and click the “Create account” button.

To get the latest release files, log in to the gumroad.com account with which you purchased DocFetcher Pro or DocFetcher Server. In your account, clicking “Library” on the left will take you to a list of the products you purchased on Gumroad. Among these products should be DocFetcher Pro or DocFetcher Server, and clicking these will take you to the latest release files.

When upgrading from one version of portable DocFetcher Pro or from one version of DocFetcher Server to a newer version, do not unpack the new version on top of the old version. This will get program files mixed up, potentially causing abnormal program behavior. Here’s the correct way to upgrade the program and also keep your settings and indexes:

1. Unpack the new program version to a fresh location.
2. Copy only the folders conf and indexes from the old program folder to the new program folder.
3. Copy from the old program folder to the new program folder any files you modified by hand.

Note: If you’re using non-portable DocFetcher Pro, then on Windows (and only on Windows) you can safely install the new program version in the same folder as the existing version (e.g., C:\Program Files\DocFetcher Pro). This is safe because the installer will automatically remove the existing version before installing the new one. The installer will also retain any existing settings and indexes. On platforms other than Windows, non-portable DocFetcher Pro must be unpacked to a fresh location, and it will reuse any existing settings and indexes in your home folder.

As for DocFetcher Server, all release files of DocFetcher Server are portable, so the above upgrade procedure for portable releases applies.

DocFetcher Pro

How the settings and indexes from the DocFetcher Pro demo can be transferred to the full version depends on the DocFetcher Pro version you’re using:

• Windows, non-portable (installed): Open the folder C:\Users[Your Username]\AppData\Local. In that folder, you’ll find a folder named DocFetcher Pro Demo. Make a copy of it in the same location by selecting it and pressing Ctrl+C and then Ctrl+V. Rename the copy to DocFetcher Pro. If there was already a folder named DocFetcher Pro, then rename the latter to something else or remove it before renaming the copied folder.
• Linux and macOS, non-portable: In your home folder, rename the folder .docfetcherprodemo to .docfetcherpro. Rename or remove an existing .docfetcherpro folder beforehand if there is one.
• Any platform, portable: Copy only the folders conf and indexes from the demo program folder to the full version program folder.

Note that the above instructions assume that you wish to transfer settings and indexes from a non-portable demo to a non-portable full version, or from a portable demo to a portable full version. Transferring between non-portable and portable is also possible and essentially just comes down to locating the conf and indexes folders and copying them to the right place.

DocFetcher Server

To transfer the settings and indexes from the DocFetcher Server demo to the full version, copy only the folders conf and indexes from the demo program folder to the full version program folder.

DocFetcher has a misc/paths.txt file that allows customizing the location of the indexes. In DocFetcher Pro, the misc/paths.txt file is gone without replacement for technical reasons (namely known bugginess and program instability), so relocating the indexes that way is not possible with DocFetcher Pro. However, there is still another way: In the portable versions of DocFetcher Pro, the indexes are inside the program folder, and this folder can be moved around freely.

As for DocFetcher Server, it is essentially a portable application on all platforms, so to relocate the indexes you can simply move the entire program folder.

Pausing and resuming indexing is possible in both DocFetcher Pro and DocFetcher Server, but the functionality is somewhat non-obvious: Just abort the current indexing process. In the case of index creation and index rebuilding, you’ll then be asked whether to keep or discard the partially created index. Select “keep”. When you want to resume indexing, select that partial index and run an index update on it. It may take some time for the application to find the spot where indexing was aborted previously.

There are two likely reasons: First, the “Use type-ahead search” option in the preferences can have a significant impact on performance. If it’s enabled, try disabling it.

Second, it’s possible that you have indexed one or more very large folders, and that these folders are being frequently modified in the background, triggering continuous index updating in DocFetcher Pro and thus slowing the latter down. In that case, try turning off automatic index updating on all indexes. To do so for a single index, right-click on it in the Search Scope pane and uncheck “Auto-Update Index”. Alternatively, you can disable automatic index updating on all indexes at once by launching the program with a --disable-auto-index-update argument.

The page “Index Updates” in the user manual explains how DocFetcher Pro’s automatic index updating works, and what the alternatives are when automatic index updating is not available.

No, but there’s a workaround. For some context: On Windows and Linux, the free DocFetcher has a global hotkey (by default Ctrl + F8) to bring the program window to the front. This feature was not carried over to DocFetcher Pro as the hotkey is known to cause stability issues. However, it is possible to emulate the hotkey with additional software, as explained below. How to emulate the hotkey on macOS will not be explained, but it can be done with Automator and AppleScript.

On Windows

1. Download the open-source software AutoHotkey from here and install it. Afterwards, restart Windows.
2. Press Windows key + R, type shell:startup, then press Enter. This opens your startup applications folder.
3. Right-click in that folder and select New > AutoHotkey Script. Give the new .ahk file a name, e.g., DocFetcher Pro Hotkey.ahk. The .ahk file is a script that will be run every time Windows starts up.
4. Right-click the .ahk file, then select Edit Script.
5. Replace all text in the .ahk file with this:

^F8::
if WinActive("DocFetcher Pro") {
    WinMinimize, DocFetcher Pro
} else {
    WinActivate, DocFetcher Pro
}

6. Save and close the .ahk file.
7. Restart Windows.
8. From now on, you can press Ctrl + F8 to bring a running DocFetcher Pro instance to the front. After pressing Ctrl + F8, you can further press Ctrl + F to focus the search field in DocFetcher Pro. If you press Ctrl + F8 while DocFetcher Pro is already the active window, it will be minimized instead.
9. The ^F8:: line in the .ahk script above is what binds the script to the Ctrl + F8 hotkey. For other hotkeys, see this page in the AutoHotkey documentation.
10. To learn more about AutoHotkey, see the AutoHotkey documentation, and the tutorial in particular.

On Linux

1. Install AutoKey. On Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu, run this command in the terminal: sudo apt install autokey-gtk
2. If not already installed, install the following dependencies: wmctrl and xdotool.
3. Start AutoKey.
4. In AutoKey, create a new script: File > New > Script
5. Paste the following code into the code editor:

output = system.exec_command("wmctrl -lx", getOutput=True)
if "DocFetcher Pro.DocFetcher Pro" in output:
    winClass = window.get_active_class()
    if winClass == "DocFetcher Pro.DocFetcher Pro":
        system.exec_command("xdotool windowminimize $(xdotool getactivewindow)")
    else:
        system.exec_command("wmctrl -x -a "DocFetcher Pro.DocFetcher Pro"")

6. Beneath the code editor, assign a hotkey, e.g., Ctrl + F8.
7. Add AutoKey to your startup applications. You can do this from within AutoKey: Edit > Preferences > Automatically start AutoKey at login
8. Save the script and close the AutoKey window. It’ll keep running in the background.
9. From now on, you can press Ctrl + F8 to bring a running DocFetcher Pro instance to the front. After pressing Ctrl + F8, you can further press Ctrl + F to focus the search field in DocFetcher Pro. If you press Ctrl + F8 while DocFetcher Pro is already the active window, it will be minimized instead.

Let’s assume you followed the setup instructions in the documentation and got DocFetcher Server up and running to the point where you can access it locally, i.e., on the server machine, via a URL like this: http://localhost:31190/

However, when you try to access it from the outside using your server machine’s address, e.g., http://192.255.234.105:31190/, your browser only displays an error message.

Possible explanations:

• If your server machine sits in a local network and connects to the outside world through a router, you need to set up port forwarding on the router.
• Access to the DocFetcher Server instance may be blocked by a firewall. It could be a firewall in your router, a firewall of your web hoster, or a firewall on the server machine itself (e.g., Windows Firewall, UFW).

The users that are counted towards the client limit of a DocFetcher Server instance are not identified by IP addresses, but by browser sessions. This has the following non-obvious implications:

• Accessing the server from two different browsers on the same computer — counts as 2 users.
• Accessing the server from a private and a non-private tab in the same browser — counts as 2 users.

From a user perspective, this is admittedly not ideal, since accessing the server from the same computer in multiple ways is still really only one “seat”. However, the alternative, counting by IP addresses, is technically infeasible because IP addresses are generally not a reliable way to identify users.

In particular, if two users access a server from behind a NAT firewall or a proxy server, the server being accessed would see both users as having the same IP address. Thus, DocFetcher Server’s client limit could easily be circumvented by using a proxy server.

For an extended technical discussion of the IP addresses vs. browser sessions issue, please see this page and this page on Stack Overflow.

DocFetcher Server offers a workaround called session stealing that makes switching between different browsers on the same computer as well as switching between different computers more convenient. Session stealing means that when the client limit is reached, new users are able to take over existing sessions, thus kicking their previous owners out of the web interface. The intended use is for users to kick themselves out in order to more easily switch between browsers and/or computers. For instances of DocFetcher Server with a client limit greater than 1, session stealing is off by default and must be enabled in the Admin Area on the Access tab.

There’s no roadmap, just a mountain of feature requests and a vague idea of where the project might go in the future. Many years of experience with DocFetcher have shown that concrete feature plans rarely pan out, often due to sheer technical difficulties and/or because too many other features are also vying for developer attention.

For example, a web interface of DocFetcher was “planned” all the way back in 2008, but it wasn’t until 2022 that DocFetcher Server 1.0 saw the day of light, after a full year of development.

Refund in case of defects

You will be given a partial or full refund if:

• the software product turns out to be defective, and
• the defect could not be reasonably expected and was not mentioned as a known issue in the product description, and
• the defect cannot be fixed despite a reasonable effort from both the developer and the user towards fixing the defect

Please note that merely claiming that the product is defective, without further detail or supporting evidence, is not enough to get you a refund.

The amount being refunded depends on the severity of the defect. In case of a full refund, you will afterwards no longer be able to download the product.

Refund in case of product inclusion

If you used the same user account to purchase two products such that one contains the other as a subset (e.g., “DocFetcher Pro 1.x Windows + Linux bundle” on one hand and “DocFetcher Pro 1.x for Windows” on the other hand), then you are eligible for a full refund of the included product.

Refund in case of accidental purchase

If you accidentally bought a demo version of any DocFetcher product instead of the full version, you are eligible for a full refund.

If you accidentally bought a full version for the wrong OS (e.g., Windows version instead of Linux version), then a full refund is not possible. This is due to the fact that the Gumroad platform currently offers sellers no way of knowing whether buyers have already downloaded a purchased product or not. However, in case of DocFetcher Pro, you can still upgrade to a bundle version, which costs less than buying the different OS versions separately. For example, the Windows + Linux bundle costs less than buying the Windows and Linux version separately.