You must be familiar with the find-as-you-type functionality if you are using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome browsers. The find-as-you-type or also called the incremental search, is very useful and save you time because as you type a few letters in the find dialog box, one or more possible matches for the text will be highlighted and immediately presented to you in real time. In most of the times, you will find the word or phrase you are looking for without typing the complete word or phrase.
Unfortunately, this functionality is not available by default in Windows Explorer. But luckily, Windows Explorer can be extended with a third party application. Listary is an enhancement utility for Windows that provides the find-as-you-type functionality to Windows Explorer.
With the help of Listary, finding file from a long list of files in any folder is now much more easier and quicker. You just need to type the first few letters of the file name you’re looking for and Listary will automatically match the letters with the files in your folder.
As you start typing in the Windows Explorer, a search box will pop ups at the bottom right corner of the window. Listary will filter the content in the folder and show the files or items that match to what you’ve typed in real time. You can scroll through the search results with tab.
Moreover, Listary supports hotkeys and wildcards like “*” and “?”, so you can search in the current list handily. Listary also provides some small but useful commands.
For example, you can open a command-line window in the current directory while using Windows Explorer or a file dialog by typing “/cmd” and pressing Enter.
Listary is free for download and is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7.