Hister: Private Full-Content Search Engine You Control
Original: Hister – A private, full content search index that you control
Why This Matters
Self-hosted personal search tools are gaining traction as privacy concerns around cloud-based data collection grow.
Hister is a free, open-source (AGPLv3) self-hosted search tool that indexes the full content of web pages you visit and local files you store. It runs on your own machine or server with no telemetry or external requests, giving users complete control over their personal search index.
Hister is a self-hosted, privacy-focused search engine that turns visited web pages and local files into a private, full-content search index. Available on GitHub under the AGPLv3 license, the tool can be installed on a personal machine or server, with no telemetry and no external data requests. Users can collect content via a Chrome browser extension, by watching local folders, importing browsing history, or crawling a site. Hister then extracts and indexes the full text of each document, storing a readable preview alongside each search result. The search interface supports advanced query features including fields, phrases, wildcards, negation, result priorities, and custom aliases. A live demo is available at demo.hister.org, and the Chrome extension is listed on the Chrome Web Store. The project emphasizes data sovereignty: all indexed content and search operations remain on infrastructure the user controls.