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win-search-aliases

License: MIT Python 3.11+ Windows 11 Tests Latest Release

Find any app from Windows Start search — even when you type in the wrong keyboard layout.

image

Adds managed synonyms to the internal Windows Search AppsIndex.db so that apps are found regardless of whether you typed in Latin or Cyrillic (or any other supported layout).

View Changelog

Note

Windows 11 Only. This tool relies on the Windows 11 internal Search database schema and will not work correctly on Windows 10 or older versions.

Screenshots

CLI UI
image image

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Quick Install

One-liner (PowerShell):

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mbv06/win-search-aliases/main/install.ps1 | iex"
Other install methods

pip

python -m pip install --upgrade https://github.com/mbv06/win-search-aliases/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Standalone EXE

Download win-search-aliases-ui-<version>.exe from the latest release — no Python needed.

Usage

# Auto-detect layouts & apply aliases
win-search-aliases auto

# Interactive generation for specific apps
win-search-aliases generate-selected --map uk-jcuken

# Open desktop UI
win-search-aliases-ui
More commands 
# Add a custom alias
win-search-aliases add-custom --app "Google Chrome" --alias browser

# List / remove managed aliases
win-search-aliases list-managed
win-search-aliases remove-managed

# Restore from backup
win-search-aliases restore-backup --latest

# Preview without changes
win-search-aliases generate-all --map auto --dry-run

How It Works

  1. Reads the Windows Search AppsIndex.db (SQLite) located in %LOCALAPPDATA%.
  2. For each app, generates transliterated synonyms based on the selected keyboard layout map.
  3. Writes synonym rows with managed source tags — only those rows are ever touched.
  4. Restarts SearchHost so Start search picks up the changes immediately.

Note

A timestamped backup is created before every write. Use restore-backup to roll back at any time.

Supported Layouts

The tool comes with a set of default keyboard maps. You can see the full list of natively supported layouts in the keyboard_maps.toml file.

If your preferred layout is not supported, you can easily add it yourself! Check out the Adding Custom Keyboard Layouts guide for instructions on how to define your own layout.

Safety

  • Only rows created by this tool (sources: WinSearchAliasesAuto, WinSearchAliasesManual, WinSearchAliasesCustom) are modified or removed.
  • Re-running commands is idempotent — no duplicate rows.
  • This is an unofficial edit of the Windows Search database. It may need to be re-applied after major Windows updates or search index rebuilds.

Uninstall

Before completely removing the tool, you should remove all managed aliases from the Windows Search database:

win-search-aliases remove-managed

Then, depending on how you installed it:

If installed via the PowerShell script (install.ps1): Simply delete the created virtual environment directory (this will keep your backups safe):

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\win-search-aliases\venv"

If installed via pip:

python -m pip uninstall win-search-aliases

License

MIT