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Search Functionality

Local Search

Local search allows you to search within the currently displayed note. To initiate a local search, press CTRL-F. If using a web browser, this will be handled by the browser's native search functionality. In the desktop (electron) version, a separate dialog will apear.

Note Search

Note search enables you to find notes by searching for text in the title, content, or attributes of the notes. You also have the option to save your searches, which will create a special search note which is visible on your navigation tree and contains the search results as sub-items.

To search for notes, click on the magnifying glass icon on the toolbar or press the CTRL-S keyboard shortcut.

Simple Note Search Examples

  • rings tolkien: Full-text search to find notes containing both "rings" and "tolkien".
  • "The Lord of the Rings" Tolkien: Full-text search where "The Lord of the Rings" must match exactly.
  • note.content *=* rings OR note.content *=* tolkien: Find notes containing "rings" or "tolkien" in their content.
  • towers #book: Combine full-text and attribute search to find notes containing "towers" and having the "book" label.
  • towers #book or #author: Search for notes containing "towers" and having either the "book" or "author" label.
  • towers #!book: Search for notes containing "towers" and not having the "book" label.
  • #book #publicationYear = 1954: Find notes with the "book" label and "publicationYear" set to 1954.
  • #genre *=* fan: Find notes with the "genre" label containing the substring "fan". Additional operators include *=* for "contains", =* for "starts with", *= for "ends with", and != for "is not equal to".
  • #book #publicationYear >= 1950 #publicationYear < 1960: Use numeric operators to find all books published in the 1950s.
  • #dateNote >= TODAY-30: A "smart search" to find notes with the "dateNote" label within the last 30 days. Supported smart values include NOW +- seconds, TODAY +- days, MONTH +- months, YEAR +- years.
  • ~author.title *=* Tolkien: Find notes related to an author whose title contains "Tolkien".
  • #publicationYear %= '19[0-9]{2}': Use the '%=' operator to match a regular expression (regex). This feature has been available since Trilium 0.52.

Advanced Use Cases

  • ~author.relations.son.title = 'Christopher Tolkien': Search for notes with an "author" relation to a note that has a "son" relation to "Christopher Tolkien". This can be modeled with the following note structure:
    • Books
      • Lord of the Rings
        • label: “book”
        • relation: “author” points to “J. R. R. Tolkien” note
    • People
      • J. R. R. Tolkien
        • relation: “son” points to "Christopher Tolkien" note
        • Christopher Tolkien
  • ~author.title *= Tolkien OR (#publicationDate >= 1954 AND #publicationDate <= 1960): Use boolean expressions and parentheses to group expressions. Note that expressions starting with a parenthesis need an "expression separator sign" (# or ~) prepended.
  • note.parents.title = 'Books': Find notes with a parent named "Books".
  • note.parents.parents.title = 'Books': Find notes with a grandparent named "Books".
  • note.ancestors.title = 'Books': Find notes with an ancestor named "Books".
  • note.children.title = 'sub-note': Find notes with a child named "sub-note".

Search with Note Properties

Notes have properties that can be used in searches, such as noteId, dateModified, dateCreated, isProtected, type, title, text, content, rawContent, ownedLabelCount, labelCount, ownedRelationCount, relationCount, ownedRelationCountIncludingLinks, relationCountIncludingLinks, ownedAttributeCount, attributeCount, targetRelationCount, targetRelationCountIncludingLinks, parentCount, childrenCount, isArchived, contentSize, noteSize, and revisionCount.

These properties can be accessed via the note. prefix, e.g., note.type = code AND note.mime = 'application/json'.

Order by and Limit

#author=Tolkien orderBy #publicationDate desc, note.title limit 10

This example will:

  1. Find notes with the author label "Tolkien".
  2. Order the results by publicationDate in descending order.
  3. Use note.title as a secondary ordering if publication dates are equal.
  4. Limit the results to the first 10 notes.

Negation

Some queries can only be expressed with negation:

#book AND not(note.ancestor.title = 'Tolkien')

This query finds all book notes not in the "Tolkien" subtree.

Under the Hood

Label and Relation Shortcuts

The "full" syntax for searching by labels is:

note.labels.publicationYear = 1954

For relations:

note.relations.author.title *=* Tolkien

However, common label and relation searches have shortcut syntax:

#publicationYear = 1954
#author.title *=* Tolkien

Separating Full-Text and Attribute Parts

Search syntax allows combining full-text search with attribute-based search seamlessly. For example, tolkien #book contains:

  1. Full-text tokens - tolkien
  2. Attribute expressions - #book

Trilium detects the separation between full text search and attribute/property search by looking for certain special characters or words that denote attributes and properties (e.g., #, ~, note.). If you need to include these in full-text search, escape them with a backslash so they are processed as regular text:

"note.txt" 
\#hash 
#myLabel = 'Say "Hello World"'

Escaping Special Characters

Special characters can be enclosed in quotes or escaped with a backslash to be used in full-text search:

"note.txt"
\#hash
#myLabel = 'Say "Hello World"'

Three types of quotes are supported: single, double, and backtick.

Type Coercion

Label values are technically strings but can be coerced for numeric comparisons:

note.dateCreated =* '2019-05'

This finds notes created in May 2019. Numeric operators like #publicationYear >= 1960 convert string values to numbers for comparison.

Auto-Trigger Search from URL

You can open Trilium and automatically trigger a search by including the search url encoded string in the URL:

http://localhost:8080/#?searchString=abc