Search Keywords AND / NOT / OR

249 votes

We need to combine keywords in searches in such a way that we can AND, NOT or OR the various elements, e.g.: group:Today AND NOT is:completed

Along with this effort, we will seek to reduce the fuzziness of the current search engine matching, which tends to err too far on the side of including results with over-fuzzy matches.

Done effort-high searching Suggested by: Fritz (11 May, '20) • Upvoted: 10 Oct • Comments: 18

Comments: 18

30 Jun
Bill Admin Pinned
As of our latest mobile & desktop release, this is now implemented, along with quotes for phrase searching.

These features aren't possible on the web app since we can't use a first-class database within the web process without compromising performance. We'll continue searching for options to avail this on web, but we're marking this "Done" since it's unclear when web will be possible, and all of the non-web platforms available to subscribers now support this.
17 May, '20
Rajeev
This boolian system should also apply to tags: "home AND evening," for instance, or "home OR work" or "work NOT administrative" etc.
1
14 Aug, '20
Tara
Also need to be able to search for things like notes with no tags at all, or tasks with no due dates and so on.
1
17 Dec, '20
Mark Lopez
Stricter search would also be good, so we can search for things like ios and not get results like studios.
27 Dec, '20
Lucian Admin
As an update:

AND-search is possible now by shift+clicking tags (or by typing "in:tag1,tag2,tag3").

"group:untagged" will return all notes with no tags asigned.
15 Jan, '21
Brian Cohen Admin
"Stricter Search" (suggested by Mark Lopez on 2020-12-16), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
25 Jan, '21
Eric
I think it could be useful to save these as a shortcut also.

I.e. “-group:work” or “NOTgroup:work” as a task shortcut pulls tasks from all tags except “work”
21 Feb, '21
Scott
I'd specifically like to be able to search for notes with a certain tag AND tasks in different states (completed|active|hidden). E.G., notes tagged as projects with no active or hidden tasks
03 Oct, '21
Paul Hacker
Smart lists for commonly repeated searches
1
14 Apr, '22
weird
I'd want to be able to do *exact* searches too. Why is everyone here beating around the bush as like exact search is hard and we just need to inch towards it? Exact search is the easier kind of search lol.

We need things like exact search with quotes, and wildcards with *, and regex search

See this Discord feature request for examples about why not having exact search can make your life hell: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360043045592-Exact-search

I've been waiting for this for years in Discord. Don't make me wait years for it in Amplenote.
1
15 Apr, '22
Vincent
Search results ranking based on backlinks would help a lot!
08 Jun, '23
AM
I'm buried in search results every time I search for anything. Search is almost useless to me. Pretty much every other aspect of this app is a joy, but searching is misery.

Even just adding exact search ("searchterm") or the ability to search note titles (title: searchterm) would help 100x. I am begging.
27 Aug, '23
Len Raymond
To have "^" work some situations and not others contributes to confusion. Fully boolean is the only way to go. Anything less severely damages the AmpleNote brand!
04 Dec, '23
Adam P.
Would it be too pesky to ask for NEAR as well? 😅
24 Aug
Tewit. K
I couldn't figure it out how to use it (i use desktop current version).
Could someone provide me a guide/link of this update.
08 Sep
Lucian Admin
Apologies, everyone. This feature was marked as "DONE" by mistake.
16 Oct
Lucian Admin
This feature is now LIVE FOR MOBILE AND DESKTOP (web client does not have this yet due to technical limitations).

https://www.amplenote.com/blog/q3_2024_update_note_backgrounds_calendar_events_agenda_view#___Complex_AND%2C_OR%2C_NOT_search_queries_for_full-content_search_%2B_exact_matches
22 Oct
Lucian Admin
More detailed docs now live here: https://www.amplenote.com/help/search_filter_tags_groups