Search and Quick Open

Craft’s search helps you quickly locate content across your space, whether it’s a document, a block of text, or a task. It’s designed to work seamlessly and intuitively across platforms. You can search in two ways:

• Global Search finds results across all spaces and documents.
• Document Search looks within one document and its subpages. Learn more.

This article covers Global Search and Quick Open.

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Search Bar

You can find the search bar while browsing through your documents, in any of the views in the left sidebar.

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Searching Logic

As you type into the search bar, Craft checks for matches across your entire workspace. The results you see are sorted based on a few factors:

• Title matches are prioritized – if your search term appears in a title, that result is ranked higher.

• Exact phrase matches come next, especially those found earlier in the document.

• Recency and frequency can affect relevance – more recent or frequently opened documents may appear higher in your results.
• Starred documents may also receive a relevance boost.
• Searches match the beginning of words, not the middle or end (e.g., “Pors” will find “Porsche”, but “orsche” won’t).

Search works across “All Docs,” “Starred,” “Trash,” and “Shared with Me,” along with all of your folders. Tasks and calendar entries are also included in macOS and iPad apps. Search results show in a grid or list view, with a preview of the document or block. Clicking a result takes you directly to the relevant content, and matching words are highlighted.

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Supported Content

Craft can search through:

• Text blocks (titles and body)
• Pages and subpages
• Tasks inside documents (title and description) – only on macOS and iPad
• Events (title and content) – only on macOS and iPad
• Collection rows and columns
• Code blocks and table cells
• Rich link previews (title and description)
• File and image names

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Advanced Search Options

You can refine your searches using advanced syntax:

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Exact Phrase Matching

Use quotes to search for exact phrases. This is useful when you want to find specific multi-word terms. Examples:

• "meeting notes" - finds documents containing exactly “meeting notes”
• "project plan 2024" - matches the exact phrase “project plan 2024”
• "to do" - finds “to do” but not “todo” or “to-do”

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Excluding Terms

Use a hyphen (minus sign) to exclude specific words from your search results. Examples:

• project -draft – finds documents with “project” but excludes those containing “draft”
• notes -archived – shows notes that don’t contain “archived”
• meeting -canceled -postponed – finds meetings that aren’t canceled or postponed

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Regular Expressions

Use regular expressions for advanced pattern matching. Prefix your regex pattern with regex:. Examples:

• regex:(draft|final) – finds documents containing either “draft” or “final”
• regex:202[0-9] – matches any year from 2020-2029
• regex:task-[0-9]+ – finds task IDs like “task-123”, “task-456”
• regex:(urgent|high priority) – matches documents with “urgent” or “high priority”

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Combining Techniques

You can combine multiple advanced search techniques for powerful queries: Examples:

• "project plan" -draft regex:202[0-9] – finds exact phrase “project plan” from 2020s, excluding drafts
• meeting "Q1 2024" -canceled – finds Q1 2024 meetings that weren’t canceled
• regex:(client|customer) -archived – finds client/customer documents that aren’t archived

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Quick Open

The Quick Open feature is designed to help you navigate your workspace faster. It’s a keyboard-first experience that saves you time and keeps you in your flow.

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What is Quick Open?

Quick Open is a universal search and navigation tool built right into Craft. It allows you to:

• Instantly find and open any document or page in your workspace
• Jump to recently viewed content
• Open your daily note or create a new one
• Access starred documents or shared pages quickly

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How to Open Quick Open

You’ll see a floating search bar that lets you begin typing immediately.

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How Quick Open Works

Once Quick Open is active: You can also use Quick Open to:

• Type “today” to jump to your daily note
• Type “new” to create a new document
• Search by keyword, not just title – content blocks and subpages are included in the results

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Tips for Power Users

• You can open multiple documents quickly without using the sidebar or mouse
• Use Quick Open as your primary way to move around your space and reduce context switching
• It’s especially useful in large workspaces where browsing folders would take more time

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Limitations to be Aware Of

Search in Craft does not yet support filters for narrowing by document type, folder, or author. There are also a few specific things to keep in mind:

• Tasks in Inbox will not be found via search
• Only exact beginnings of words are matched
• Shared docs that you haven’t opened yet may not be fully indexed (only title and preview)
• Clicking a match in a code or table block will open the block, but won’t highlight the exact row
• Search doesn’t cover emojis, and requires:
  • At least 3 characters for Latin-based languages
  • At least 2 characters for others

Search results are temporarily cached for 10 seconds, so you may notice a small delay in new changes appearing. Quick Open is currently optimized for searching content within your own workspace. Shared documents that you haven’t yet opened may appear with limited preview information.

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Index Updates

Your space’s search index refreshes automatically every 24 hours. You don’t need to manually update or trigger anything to keep search results up to date.

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