Getting started on Windows.

• Windows 10 (version 1803+) or Windows 11.
• ~1.2 GB free disk space for the app and its AI model, plus a little for the search index (roughly 100 MB per 25k files).
• Optional but recommended: any DirectX 12 GPU - NVIDIA (GTX 1060+/RTX), AMD, or Intel Arc/integrated. Indexing runs faster on a GPU, using your normal graphics driver - nothing extra to install.
• A sound library in WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, OGG, or Opus - plus M4A if ffmpeg is installed on your PATH (Windows has no built-in M4A decoder). Local drives, mapped network drives, UNC paths, and cloud filesystems like LucidLink all work.
• An internet connection once, to activate your license key. After that Arc Search works offline. When it is online, it checks your license and looks for updates when it starts. Your audio never leaves your machine, and your files are never copied or moved.

1. Run the downloaded .exe installer.
2. This build is code-signed, so Windows shows a verified publisher in the install prompt. SmartScreen may still show "Windows protected your PC" on first download - the signing certificate is new and earns its reputation as more people install. Until then, click More info → Run anyway.
3. Accept the license agreement - Next stays disabled until you choose "I accept".
4. Follow the installer - it installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\ArcSearch\ for your Windows user only, with no administrator prompt, and adds a Start Menu entry.

Launch Arc Search from the Start Menu.

Arc Search opens on its license screen. Enter the license key from your purchase email or the checkout page and click Activate. Activation needs an internet connection this one time.

No license yet? Click Continue demo. The evaluation runs for 14 days with every feature available, and the header shows how many days are left. The license screen appears at each launch until you activate a key, so you can enter one whenever you are ready. When the 14 days are up, Arc Search asks for a license key before it opens.

One license covers two machines at a time. To move Arc Search to a new machine, open Preferences (the gear button, or Ctrl+,) on the old one and choose Sign out of this machine under License. If you no longer have the old machine, release it at arcantus.io/license/release/.

On the first-run setup screen:

• Click the folder picker and choose your sound library's root folder, or
• Paste a path directly (useful for network storage):
  • UNC paths: \\server\share\sfx
  • Mapped drives: T:\SFX (also reachable via the folder picker)
  • LucidLink and similar mounts work like any other drive.

You can add more libraries later (top-right library menu → Add Library), so start with one. Arc Search will only ever read this folder. It never moves, renames, or writes into your library.

Arc picks the best available device on its own. With a DirectX 12 GPU it uses GPU (DirectML), which works across NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel. Otherwise it falls back to CPU. When more than one device is available, the setup screen shows a Hardware Acceleration card where you can choose. The Resource Usage slider trades indexing speed for headroom. Pull it down if you'll be working in your DAW or Game Engine while Arc indexes your sounds. You can change the device or resources later under Hardware in the library menu, whenever an index is not running.

Click Start Indexing.

Arc reads the full audio of every file and runs it through a neural network. This is what makes it possible to search for what a sound sounds like. It's slower than the filename-only scan you may know from other library tools, and it's a one-time cost: after the first pass, rescans skip unchanged files and take only a few seconds.

Rough first-index times. The local figures come from a laptop with an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Laptop GPU and a local NVMe SSD, which indexed about 20 files a second on the GPU and about 12 on the CPU. A slower GPU or CPU takes longer.

Network library index speeds are driven by your network connection. It's best to leave large indexes on network drives running overnight.

Useful to know while it runs:

• Files become searchable as they're indexed. You can start searching the finished portion immediately.
• Stop is safe. The Stop Index button in the library menu (upper right) halts after the current batch finishes indexing. Everything indexed so far stays searchable, and Reindex later picks up exactly where it left off.
• Closing the app or letting your PC sleep is also safe. At worst the last few files in flight are redone on the next rescan.

Type how you'd describe the sound to another designer:

• heavy metal door slam with long tail
• small glass debris scatter
• low rumbling earthquake bed

• The Search Mode slider above the search box blends keyword matching (left) with sonic/AI matching (right). The default is 60% sonic - drag it and watch the results change. Ctrl+1 / Ctrl+2 / Ctrl+3 jump straight to keyword, hybrid, and sonic mode.
• Each result carries a one-letter badge - S (sonic), K (keyword), or H (hybrid: both) - so you can see why it matched. Hover it for the detail.
• Add NOT (in capitals) to exclude the word after it: metal impact NOT glass. Quote a phrase to exclude all of it: NOT "broken glass".
• Search within: press Ctrl+L (or click the lock icon) to lock the current results, then type a refinement - "explosion" → Ctrl+L → "glass" searches only inside the explosion results. Ctrl+Shift+L backs out one layer. Esc clears the whole search.
• The shuffle toggle (Ctrl+S) randomizes which equally-relevant sounds lead the results list. Ctrl+Shift+S re-rolls.
• Drop any audio file onto the search bar to find sounds similar to it.
• Ctrl+F jumps back to the search box from anywhere.

• Click a row to load it in the waveform preview, or double-click to play it. ↑/↓ move through results and Space plays or pauses the highlighted one. Enter jumps back to the start without stopping; 0 stops and returns to the start.
• Click-drag on the waveform to select a region. L loops the region (or the whole file) and Backspace clears it.
• The preview bar has independent Speed and Pitch (±12 semitones) controls - changes are instant. Nudge from the keyboard: Alt+↑/Alt+↓ pitch by a semitone, Alt+←/Alt+→ for speed, Alt+[ ] for volume. Add Shift to any of them for a finer step (a tenth of a semitone for pitch). R resets speed and pitch - and every launch starts clean at 1.00× / 0 st.
• Rows you've heard tint orange so you can keep track. H clears the heard marks.
• Press ? any time for the full shortcut map.

All import methods bake in your region selection, speed, and pitch. What you hear in Arc is exactly what arrives in your DAW:

1. Drag - grab a result row (or the highlighted waveform region) and drop it on your DAW timeline. Regions export as 24-bit WAV. Files on network storage (UNC paths) drag correctly.
2. Copy/paste - Ctrl+C in Arc, then paste in your DAW, just like copying a file in Explorer.
3. Insert into DAW - Ctrl+Enter brings your running DAW to the foreground and pastes the sound at its edit cursor. If more than one DAW is open, it goes to the one you used last. Detects Reaper, Pro Tools, Cubase, Nuendo, WaveLab, Ableton Live, Studio One, Bitwig Studio, FL Studio, Premiere Pro, Audition, DaVinci Resolve, Mixbus, Samplitude, Sound Forge, Digital Performer, Reason, and Pyramix.

If your DAW doesn't come forward or doesn't receive the paste, please tell us which DAW and which Windows version (see Feedback, below).

Click the file count in the top-right corner:

• Add Library - index another folder or library. Existing libraries stay in place.
• Reindex - pick up new and changed files (fast). Files modified in place like re-tagged WAVs or re-rendered bounces are re-indexed automatically. Checkboxes select which libraries to include in the scan.
• × on a library row removes it from the index (and its files from search) without affecting the others.
• Disable on a library excludes it from the results list. The index on the library is preserved and the library can be re-enabled at any time.

The left sidebar shows every library as an expandable folder tree - click any folder to scope search to just that path.

Your index - every analyzed sound, your favorites, your library list, and your hardware settings - lives in one folder and can move with you. You do not have to re-analyze your libraries on the new PC. The options in the Preferences panel are kept elsewhere and stay behind, so set them again on the new PC.

Before you start: install the same version of Arc Search on the new PC and don't complete the first-run setup. On the old PC, sign out under License in Preferences to free its seat. If you no longer have the old PC, release it at arcantus.io/license/release/.

1. On the old PC, open File Explorer and paste %APPDATA%\io.arcantus.arc-search into the address bar.
2. Copy that whole folder to the same location on the new PC (C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\io.arcantus.arc-search). Leave out the license folder: it belongs to the old PC's install, and the new PC gets its own when you activate there. Two more things are safe to skip: the cache folder, which can be several GB of waveform and playback data that Arc rebuilds on its own (keep cache\regions if a DAW session you are moving uses regions you dragged out of Arc), and sidecar.pid.d, sidecar.pid or .ingest_in_progress if you see them, which are leftover process bookkeeping from the old machine.
3. Reconnect your sound libraries at the same paths as before. Map network drives to the same drive letter and mount UNC paths at the same address; local libraries should sit at the same folder path. Use a copy method that preserves file timestamps - File Explorer and robocopy both do, but cloud sync (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive) often does not, and changed timestamps make the next scan re-analyze files it did not need to.
4. Launch Arc Search and activate your license key. Your library is there immediately - browsing, search, and favorites all run off the copied index.
5. Open the library menu in the top-right corner and click Reindex once. With timestamps preserved it verifies the whole library without doing a full re-index.

A file plays in Explorer but didn't index.

Check the extension - this build indexes WAV, AIFF/AIF, FLAC, MP3, M4A, OGG, and Opus (AAC and WMA are skipped). M4A specifically needs ffmpeg installed and on your PATH - Windows has no built-in M4A decoder, so without it M4A files are counted as failed rather than indexed.

Indexing a network library is slow.

The first pass is limited by your network connection, regardless of GPU. Check your network connection on a first scan. Rescans after that will take significantly less time.

Full Data Wipe and Reset.

To clear all data, close Arc Search and delete %APPDATA%\io.arcantus.arc-search\ - this removes the index, your library list and hardware settings (never your audio). It also removes your license key from this PC, so sign out under License in Preferences first to free the seat, and keep your key to enter again. The next launch shows the license screen, then first-run setup.

Something missed, broke, or didn't land in your DAW? Email hello at arcantus.io, or join our Discord https://discord.gg/huj9NhtYS to speak with us directly!