Advanced Search for Issues Public Preview (Opt In roll out)

[github-staff]

Feedback wanted

Thank you for participating in the advanced search for issues public preview. Please leave your feedback below on what is working well, any bugs you encounter, and what else you’d like to see!

To provide your feedback on other experiences released at the same time, please visit:

• Sub-issues Public Preview (Opt In roll out) #139932
• Issue Types Public Preview (Opt In roll out) #139933
• Issues: Index, Create and Show Page Updates Public Preview (Opt In roll out) #139935
• Increased Project Item Limits Public Preview #139936

Writing advanced searches

From the repository Issues page, you can now build advanced queries using the AND and OR keywords, as well as nested queries using parentheses up to 5 layers deep. Here is the existing search syntax documentation for reference.

This search allows you to find issues that are either bugs or have high priority.

is:issue AND ( type:Bug OR label:priority-high )

This search allows you to find issues that were created in the last week that are either bugs or tasks, or medium priority ones you've authored.

is:issue AND created:>@today-1w AND (( type:Bug OR type:Task ) OR ( author:@me AND label:priority-medium ))

Things to note

• Advanced search is not yet available in the API, but only through the UI from the repository issues page. We are working on providing this support.
• The repo, org, and user fields currently function as OR filters when a space is included between them, rather than an AND search as it works for other fields. These fields are not yet supported in nested queries.

Looking for feedback

Please leave your feedback below 👇 on what is working well, what can be improved, and what else you’d like to see!

[htekdev]

Can we have this be usable in project queries as well...? Thats where its actually more useful vs in the repo issue query input:

[Jreevesjr]

Same!

[DanielNoord]

@ankneis Sorry for the direct ping, but you seem to consider this feature to be released according to your comment here: github/roadmap#928

Now that I understand you were working on a very specific "Issues" project I understand that this might not have been part of the project scope and roadmap issue, but are there any plans to release this filtering for "Projects" as well? I never really need AND or OR in normal issue filtering, but I need it daily in my project views... Having inconsistent behaviour across these issue filter bars is quite confusing.

[abhaykhu]

Just noting that this feature, as is, is essentially useless for our org's workflows. It would however be very valuable in projects/project search.

[mamccorm]

+1 was excited to try this feature, but unfortunate to find out it's not yet supported for project queries. Is this on the future roadmap?

[jason-capsule42]

We are using these tools extensively on the Auro Design System team at Alaska Airlines. However, we rely primarly on the project views as each of our web components is in it's own repository. I was very jazzed about the advanced search features and equally deflated when I saw that they don't work in projects. I see this conversation goes back 3 months. Would love to know if project support is even being considered.

[rugk]

UX: It's bad search shortcuts have been removed

I totally miss the "quick select" options that were there before. You could click on a dropdown on the left and choose "issues opened by you" (or similar). Literally, this is mostly the only option I have used the search bar there for. Like 80% of the time I likely want to (re-)find an open issue by my to check it's state, check for replies etc. (And yeah I cannot filter per repo in the notifications like that.) or e.g. to add new information I have found/debugged etc., when I don't know the title or so.
Long after that, "issues involving you" probably follow, for similar reasons. There no shortcut was there, but I would like it.

Old UI:

It was very convenient and easy (two clicks -> dropdown & clicking on the button). For the same process I now need to:

1. Click into the search bar.
2. Enter "a" at least. (Also note you need to know this.)
3. Click on "author:" (or write it I guess)
4. Click on "Me":
   

These are 3 clicks and one keypress at minimum to achieve the same repeating thing that previously was just two clicks away. I don't like this at all.
After all advanced search fine, but I mostly don't use or need any "advanced" features, I mostly just use plain old simple filtering and these should be as simple as before.

[rugk]

Also linked/cross-posted in https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/139935#discussioncomment-10851387

[rileybroughten]

Thank you for sharing this feedback, as noted on the other discussion we're looking into it 👍

[gustavovalverde]

Allow to save an advanced query for future use. I'd like to have some favorite queries that I might be using on a daily or weekly basis. Having an option to re-use those would be great, so we don't have to rebuild them every time, or depend on our browser to bookmark them :)

[rileybroughten]

Noted this feedback, thank you!

[mavericreal]

A bit more feedback here on why bookmarking advanced searches is critical. One key use case is triaging issues that don’t yet have a project assigned. Advanced search enables us to add criteria not available in project views, like filtering for all issues without a project. This is essential for handling incoming bugs or alerts created by tools like Datadog or Freshdesk. These issues are added directly to the repository but don’t automatically get assigned to a project.

Without a way to bookmark this search view, we lose efficiency in managing these unassigned issues. Bookmarking would allow us to treat this view as a triage dashboard, making it easy to regularly revisit, organize, and assign these issues to the right projects. It’s a simple feature that could have a massive impact on improving workflows for teams managing high volumes of incoming requests.

[mayank99]

It took me some fiddling to figure out how to exclude "sub-issues".

Using the new filter UI (type into the search field to trigger the dropdpwn, then click "Exclude", then click "Sub-issue") generates the query -sub-issue: which doesn't seem to work. I also tried -sub-issue (without the colon at the end) with no luck.

What ultimately worked is no:parent-issue, but "No" is not surfaced in the initial filter UI, and it also seems redundant with "Exclude".

Side note: I think sub-issues should be excluded by the default filter.

[rileybroughten]

Thank you for this feedback, we have it noted! Correct that once you type n you will see the No dropdown appear.

[steven-pribilinskiy]

Please collaborate with Copilot team to support natural language queries

[matthiaskrgr]

Searching for multi-word strings no longer works properly.

When I am logged off / in an alt browser and do something like this
https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20%20%22unexpected%20const%22%20
is:issue state:open "unexpected const"
I get 16 results (I want to find issues that match the entire string somewhere)

When I am logged in (I assume this enable the new advanced search) and open the same link, I get 270 results, most are which are useless, as if the query was is:issue AND state:open AND ("unexpected" OR "const") or something like that?

[rileybroughten]

Thank you for reporting this! We'll look into this and will provide an update when we have more details 👍

[rjgotten]

Searching for multi-word strings no longer works properly.

Heck-- searching for single-word strings no longer works properly.
It returns completely unrelated results where the word in question occurs nowhere in the issue.
Search is basically broken.

[edit]
Actually-- it appears it isn't broken. It's just searching deep into collapsed <details> elements as are commonly used for listing technical details in bug reports, like what software users have installed on their environment; technical logs; etc.
Maybe not search and index in those?
Or at least not return results based on those by default ?

[L-Clouds]

Looks like quoted phrases are finally working!

[rileybroughten]

We just pushed a fix this week! Let us know if you encounter this in the future 👍

[rbanks54]

Is advanced search going to be available in PRs tab as well?

Obviously I can use is:pr from the issues tab, but that's a bit annoying to do and isn't the best UX.

[david-crespo]

is:pr is a nice tip, thanks!

[rbanks54]

The team-review-requested autocomplete doesn't show all teams and any filtering seems to only be applied to the initially retrieved list, not everything that is available.

For example, I have a set of nested teams as follows

When I search for "teamsix" it doesn't appear in the list:

If I type the team name in the search returns results as expected.

I've also noticed that if I search for assignee:rich that sometimes I see my name listed, but often I don't. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to consistently replicate this behaviour :(

[winniehell]

Being able to filter by issues that I have given a 👍 would be nice.

[rileybroughten]

Thank you for sharing this feedback! Noting that you can filter by the number of reactions, just not the specific reaction type 😄

[winniehell]

When I want to get a list of issues that I'm interested in, my own reaction is far more helpful than the number of reactions from other people.
This is especially useful for open source projects with a slow release cycle where I don't want to join the discussion (so subscribing is not an option) but check regularly whether certain bugs have been fixed.

[L-Clouds]

When I try to perform a search that excludes certain text (plain words or quoted phrases), it seems to always show no results. I've tried NOT wordtoexclude, NOT "wordtoexclude", -wordtoexclude, -"wordtoexclude", and (having read this other comment) no:wordtoexclude, no:"wordtoexclude" these latter two actually providing warnings of being invalid values for no:

[L-Clouds]

Any update on this?

[rileybroughten]

Not quite yet, but I'll be sure to post here when this is resolved!

[rileybroughten]

We just pushed a fix on this, @L-Clouds could you try again and let us know if you are still seeing this issue?

[L-Clouds]

Oh, I didn't see the reply just above when I came to write this:

Discovered that there's been progress on this! It looks like NOT works again, now, although it doesn't work for quoted phrases, instead using only the first word therein - but that looks like a separate issue covered under this comment: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/139934#discussioncomment-10930535

[rileybroughten]

Yes we're working on a fix for that one currently, expect to see this fixed soon 😁 I'll post an update when it's resolved!

[thibaudcolas]

I think it’s missing a "help" link to view the advanced search syntax, like there was in the past. For example I only learned it supports reactions count filtering by looking at this thread :)

Otherwise this seems to be working great!

[rjgotten]

Searching for basic single-word queries is broken.
E.g. filtering for prior reported issues related to "SCSS" in VSCode:

Actual occurence of the search term is zero in the issue title or body itself - and even the entire thread of discussion on it.

[rjgotten]

[edit] never mind.
It appears that the search term is actually present in the collapsed extensions in the opening post.
Looks like this is a thing where Firefox does not offer search through collapsed text.

With that, maybe another suggestion is in order:
Don't search in collapsed <details> elements by default - because most of the time you're going to get this kind of thing where tangentially related stuff is going to be present in a log file and it's just going to lead to a lot of false positive hits.

[htekdev]

Im finding that the query does not work in general search.

So here is an overview...

1. Search in Repository Issue Page - UI Highlighting✔️, Search Results ✔️
2. Search in Project - UI Highlighting ❌, Search Results ❌
3. Search in Search - UI Highlighting✔️, Search Results ❌

[htekdev]

In projects I am able to perform a filter has:type but in repo search and general search that is not available... I am forced to do type:Task OR type:Bug OR ... ect... I also tried -no:type but that didnt work properly either.

There is a general theme of inconsistency in functionality between Repo Issue Page, Projects, and Search from my other comment

[rileybroughten]

We now support has:type as a filter from the repository page. We're working on updating the documentation to reflect this. Let us know if you see any issues.

[htekdev]

Im getting the following when trying to apply search for issues at org level...

Im trying to apply this search via API and not getting any success. I see the note in the body of the discussion but wanting to know when this is going to be supported since without it will hinder my ability to take advantage of this awesome feature.

[rileybroughten]

I'll provide an update when we support advanced issue searching via the API 👍 Thank you for your patience on this!

[jmssltd]

Having just switched to using Iterations in Projects for Sprints vs Milestone (which is repo based) for Sprints - being able to search across the Organization for Repo and Projects based fields will be a huge step for our business. Currently it appears that searching for Issues assigned to a Project Iteration (Sprint) does not work - using e.g. org:{orgname} created:{daterange} sprint:{sprintname}

[github-staff]

Thank you all for taking the time to share your feedback in this thread. 🙇‍♀️ We’re excited to announce that we have expanded the roll out and made meaningful updates that we believe will enhance your experience. This is a direct reflection of the conversations we’ve had here, and we’re grateful for your role in this process.

As part of this rollout, we’ve created a new feedback discussion to gather your thoughts on the latest updates and ensure we continue to improve. If you’ve already shared your experiences here, we’ve taken your feedback on board. However, if you feel there are points worth revisiting or emphasizing, we encourage you to highlight them again in the new discussions to keep the conversation fresh and relevant.

We look forward to hearing more of our users exploring the evolution of GitHub issues and sharing their thoughts in the new threads! See you there. 👋