How do I search my notes in Notesnook?

Every list view has a search box at the top of it. Type into it and Notesnook searches the notes in that view — the whole notes list, one notebook, one tag, favorites, trash — matching both note titles and the text inside notes, and showing you the matching passages.

Search runs on your device against the local database. Nothing about what you search for is sent anywhere.

You can also narrow a search with filters — by tag, color, date, or whether a note is favorited, archived or filed in a notebook.

Search inside a view

1. Click the search box at the top of the list. It's labelled after the view you're in — Search in Notes, Search in Notebook, Search in Trash and so on.
2. Type your query. Results appear as you type.
3. Press Escape, or click the ✕ in the box, to clear the search and go back to the full list.

Ctrl+F (⌘+F on macOS) puts the cursor in that box whenever the editor isn't focused. If you're in a note, Ctrl+F opens the editor's own find bar instead.

What is actually searched

You're searching	Matched on
Notes	Title and the full text of the note
Notebooks	Title and description
Tags	Title
Reminders	Title and description
Attachments	Filename, file type and hash
Trash	Deleted notes and notebooks

Locked notes

The content of a note in your private vault is encrypted, so it is never added to the search index. Locked notes are found by their titles only. This is a limitation of end-to-end encryption, not a bug.

Narrow a search with filters

Search understands filters — field:value pairs you add to a search to cut the results down. Filters only work when you are searching notes.

Put your words first, filters last

A word typed after a filter is swallowed into it, and the whole search silently returns nothing:

• favorite:true meeting — finds nothing at all
• meeting favorite:true — finds favorite notes containing "meeting" ✓

Always write what you're looking for, then the filters.

Filters you can use

Where to look

Filter	Finds
title:budget	Notes whose title matches
content:budget	Notes whose body text matches

Without either of these, your words are matched against both content and title.

Tags and colors

Filter	Finds
tag:work	Notes with the tag work
color:red	Notes with the color red

Values match the tag or color's exact title. Quote anything with a space: tag:"work stuff".

Dates

Filter	Finds
created_after:2026-01-01	Notes created after that date
created_before:2026-01-01	Notes created before it
edited_after:2026-01-01	Notes edited after it
edited_before:2026-01-01	Notes edited before it

Write dates as YYYY-MM-DD. Words like yesterday are not understood and will make the search return nothing.

Yes / no filters

Each takes exactly true or false.

Filter	true finds	false finds
favorite:	Favorited notes	Notes that aren't favorited
pinned:	Pinned notes	Unpinned notes
archived:	Archived notes	Notes not archived
readonly:	Read-only notes	Editable notes
locked:	Notes in your vault	Notes outside it
tagged:	Notes with any tag	Notes with no tags at all
colored:	Notes with any color	Notes with no color
in_notebook:	Notes filed in any notebook	Notes in no notebook

The last three are the quickest way to find notes you never filed: in_notebook:false lists every loose note, tagged:false every untagged one.

locked: only works once you have created a vault.

Combine filters

Add as many as you like — a note has to satisfy all of them:

roadmap tag:work favorite:true edited_after:2026-06-01

That reads: notes containing "roadmap", tagged work, favorited, and edited since 1 June 2026.

You can also search with filters and no words at all, which lists everything that matches:

in_notebook:false archived:false

Useful searches

Search	What it gives you
in_notebook:false	Notes you never filed into a notebook
tagged:false	Notes with no tags
favorite:true edited_after:2026-07-01	Recently edited favorites
tag:receipts created_after:2026-01-01	This year's receipts
budget content:quarterly	"budget" anywhere, "quarterly" in the body
locked:true	Everything in your vault

Things to watch out for

• true and false must be lowercase. favorite:TRUE or favorite:yes makes the search return nothing.
• A filter Notesnook doesn't recognise is treated as plain text. colour:red searches for the literal words rather than filtering by color — the spelling is color:.
• Filter names are case-sensitive: Tag:work returns nothing.

Read the results and jump to a match

A note that matched shows its title with the matching words highlighted, and the number of matches found inside the note on the right.

1. Click the arrow next to a result to expand it. Each matching passage in the note is listed underneath, with the matched words highlighted.
2. Click a passage to open the note scrolled straight to that spot.
3. Middle-click a passage to open it in a new tab instead.

Passages are only shown in the detailed list. Switching the notes list to compact view collapses results to titles.

Run a command from the keyboard

The command palette is a desktop and web feature. Press Ctrl+Shift+P (⌘+Shift+P on macOS) — Ctrl+Shift+: works too — to open it. Start typing and it fuzzy-matches every command in the app:

• Navigate — Notes, Notebooks, Tags, Favorites, Reminders, Monographs, Trash, Settings, Help and support, Keyboard shortcuts, Attachment manager.
• Create — New note, New notebook, New tag, New reminder, New color.
• Editor — when a note is open: New tab, Next tab, Previous tab, Close current tab, Close all tabs, Undo, Redo, Go back in tab, Go forward in tab, Toggle focus mode.
• General — Toggle theme.
• Every action of whatever you have open — the entire note menu for the note in the editor, and the notebook or tag menu for the notebook or tag you're viewing, appear as commands too.
• Recents — the commands you ran last, at the top.

Move with ↑ and ↓, run with ⏎. Press Delete on an entry under recents, or click the ✕ on it, to drop it from the list.

Not on mobile

The command palette and quick open are only features of the desktop and web apps. On mobile, use the search bar and the side menu.

Jump to a note by name

Quick open is a desktop and web feature. Press Ctrl+P (⌘+P on macOS) for quick open. It searches your notes, notebooks, tags and reminders by title and opens whatever you pick. With the box empty it lists your recent items and the notes already open in tabs.

Key	What it does
⏎	Open the highlighted item
Ctrl+⏎ / ⌘+⏎	Open the highlighted note in a new tab
Shift+⏎	Open a new tab titled with whatever you typed

Shift+⏎ is the fast way to turn a search that found nothing into a new note: type the title you were looking for, press Shift+⏎, and start writing.

Search your settings

1. Press Ctrl+, (⌘+, on macOS), or open Settings from the side menu.
2. Type into the Search box at the top of the settings sidebar.

The search covers every section at once — section names, group headings, setting titles, their descriptions and their keywords — so you can find a setting without knowing which section it lives in. No results found means nothing matched.

Filter notebooks and tags

The notebooks and tags lists have their own filter box, separate from note search.

1. Open Notebooks or Tags from the side menu.
2. Type into the Filter notebooks... or Filter tags... box at the bottom of the list.

Clearing the box restores the full list.

Sort a list

Sorting is set per view, and separately for each individual notebook, tag and color — so you can keep one notebook alphabetical and everything else newest-first.

1. Click the sort icon in the group header at the top of the list.
2. Open Order by and choose the direction.
3. Open Sort by and choose the key.

There are seven sort keys. Which ones are offered depends on the list you're in:

Sort by	Available in
Date created	Everywhere except trash
Date edited	Everywhere except trash and tags — and, on mobile, except reminders
Date modified	Tags, and reminders on mobile
Date deleted	Trash
Due date	Reminders
Title	Everywhere
Relevance	Search results

The direction labels change with the key: A to Z / Z to A for Title, Earliest first / Latest first for Due date, Most relevant first / Least relevant first for Relevance, and Oldest - newest / Newest - oldest for the date keys.

Group a list

Grouping splits the list into labelled sections. Six modes are available:

Group by	Result
Default	Today, Yesterday, This week, and so on
None	One flat list, no headers
Abc	One section per first letter
Year	One section per year
Month	One section per month
Week	One section per week

1. Click the sort icon in the group header.
2. Open Group by and pick a mode.

Clicking the group header itself opens Jump to group, which scrolls the list straight to any section.

Grouping isn't offered for reminders or for search results — those are always sorted, never grouped.

Switch to compact mode

Compact mode drops each row to a single line: title, plus small icons for locked, favorite, read-only and expiring notes, and the time. It fits far more notes on screen.

1. Click the view icon next to the sort icon in the group header.

It's available on the notes, favorites and notebooks lists, and it also collapses search results to their titles.

Related pages

• Keyboard shortcuts — the full list of shortcuts on desktop and web
• Note links — navigating between notes with internal links
• Note actions — what you can do with a note once you've found it
• Organize notes using notebooks — structure that makes search unnecessary
• Organize notes using tags — filtering by tag instead of searching
• Archive notes — getting old notes out of your search results