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Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep

2026-09-17 | original
read original get Samsung T7 Portable SSD → more articles
Why This Matters

Hister is a self-hosted, privacy-focused search tool that indexes the full text of visited web pages and local files, letting users search their own digital history without sending data to a cloud service. This matters as more people seek alternatives to browser history and cloud search that respect privacy while still offering powerful full-text search and AI assistant integration via MCP.

Key Takeaways
Worth a Look

Samsung T7 Portable SSD — Since Hister indexes and stores full contents of your files and browsing history locally, having fast, reliable external storage like the Samsung T7 makes sense for keeping your growing personal search index safe and portable. Its speed keeps searches snappy even as your indexed archive grows large, and its compact design fits neatly into a self-hosted, privacy-focused workflow like Hister's.ed.

See Samsung T7 Portable SSD on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.

Hister

Your own search engine

Hister is a private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep. It indexes their full contents so you can find information again from the web interface, terminal, or an AI assistant connected through MCP.

Try the demo · Download Hister · Read the quickstart · Documentation

Quickstart

Download the binary for your platform from the latest release, then rename it to hister ( hister.exe on Windows). On Linux or macOS, make it executable: chmod +x hister Start Hister on Linux or macOS: ./hister listen On Windows, run .\hister.exe listen in PowerShell. Keep this terminal open while using Hister. The server must be running to index pages and search them. Open http://127.0.0.1:4433 and install the browser extension for Firefox or Chrome. Visit a web page with the extension enabled, then return to Hister and search for a phrase from that page to find your first indexed result.

No configuration is required for a local personal setup. See the complete quickstart to choose what Hister indexes.

To search existing content, import browser history, index local directories, or import files.

Alternative installation methods include Homebrew ( brew install hister ), Docker, and Nix. See the installation guide for instructions.

Features

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Explore topics: hister private search engine browser extension mcp self-hosted search
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