Strigi's goals are to be fast, use a small amount of RAM, and use flexible backends and plug-ins.

[2] A benchmark as of January 2007 showed that Strigi is faster and uses less memory than other search systems,[3] but it lacks many of their features[citation needed].

Like most desktop search systems, Strigi can extract information from files, such as the length of an audio clip, the contents of a document, or the resolution of a picture; plugins determine what filetypes it is capable of handling.

Strigi is accessible via Konqueror, or by clicking on its icon, after adding it to KDE's Kicker or GNOME Panel.

Strigi used to be a core component of the KDE Software Compilation's semantic desktop.