Notion is designed for you to add as many layers of information as you and your team needs to solve any problem. Quick Find ensures that this "second brain" in Notion is an easily searchable archive of information 🧠Here's a brief overview:
Using Quick FindOn desktopOn mobileSort your search resultsFilter your search resultsOnly match titlesQuick filtersMore filtersCombining multiple filtersRecent pagesRecent searchesUsing database searchDatabase search vs. Quick FindFAQsRelated guides
Using Quick Find
On desktop
- When you want to find something specific — either a page or a piece of content on a page — click the
Quick Findbutton at the top of your left-hand sidebar.
- You can also open search with shortcut
cmd/ctrl+p(one of our most popular shortcuts!)
- Type your search term at the top of the Quick Find window. You'll also see your recently viewed pages and searches listed below so you can click to jump to one of them right away. This window is keyboard friendly, too, so you can use your arrow keys to scroll 🎹
Tip: Hold
cmd/ctrl while clicking any of these results to open in a new tab (web app) or a new window (desktop app)!On mobile
- Tap
☰to access your left-hand sidebar.
- Tap the
🔍icon at the top right of your sidebar. That will open the search window, which will let you type in a query or tap to jump immediately to a recently visited page or pull up a recent search.
Sort your search results
Once you search for something, you'll see the option to sort at the top left of the Quick Find window. Click the dropdown menu to reveal these sorting options:
Best Matches(default): The most relevant results will be shown first. Pages that have been recently edited show up higher on the list, and page titles are weighted much higher than page contents.
Last Edited: Newest First: Shows content that was recently edited by you or someone else in your workspace first.
Last Edited: Oldest First: Shows content that was recently edited by you or someone else in your workspace last.
Created: Newest First: Shows content that was recently created first.
Created: Oldest First: Shows content that was recently created last.
Filter your search results
Once you start typing to search for a term, you'll see the option to filter the results at the top right of the Quick Find window. Click
Add Filters to pull up a sidebar of filter options.
Only match titles
If you turn this on, Quick Find will only show you results where your search term matches the title of a page. Any content inside of a page won't be considered.
Quick filters
We added a few preset filters to cover your most common use cases, so you can filter your search in a single click. You'll see these options:
Created by me: Limits search results to content created by you.
Edited last week: Limits search results to content that was modified by you or someone else in your workspace within the past seven days.
In current page: Only page titles and page contents within the current page you're looking at (or any subpages nested in it) will be included in search results.
More filters
You can also add custom filters to search by these properties:
In page: Limits search results to content included in the page (or pages) you select. Subpages contained within your chosen pages will also be included.- Click the
In pagebutton, and select one of the pages from the dropdown (or search for the page name where it saysSearch pages). Once you add one page, you can add additional pages to the filter. - Example: If you're searching for a recipe in your workspace, you could add your recipe database to this filter.
Created by: Limits search results to content created by one or more people in your workspace.- Click the
Created bybutton, and select a workspace member from the dropdown (or search for their name where it saysSearch people). Once you add one person, you can add additional people to the filter.
Created: Limits search results to content that was created after a certain date, before a certain date, or within a specific date range.- Click the
Createdbutton, and choose a start date, end date, or both. You can also leave the date range open ended.
Last edited: Limits search results to content that was edited within a chosen date range.- Click the
Last editedbutton, and choose a start date, end date, or both. You can also leave the date range open ended.
Combining multiple filters
For more advanced searches, you can combine multiple filters at once. We use OR logic within the same property, and AND logic across separate properties. For example:
In this case, Quick Find is searching for content that contains the term "engineering" and meets these criteria:
- The content was created by Camille OR Cory
AND
- The content was created after September 1, 2019
AND
- The content is somewhere inside the page Engineering Wiki OR Team Tasks or their subpages.
Recent pages
When you first open the Quick Find window, you'll see a list of pages listed under Recent Pages. These are all pages from your workspace that you've visited lately.
- To clear your history of recently visited pages, click
Clearat the top right of the Recent Pages section in the Quick Find window.
Recent searches
When you search for something in Quick Find and there are 1 or more results, we'll save this search for later under Recent Searches in the Quick Find window.
- Click on any of the items under Recent Searches to quickly pull up that search term with any filters you applied in the past.
- If you search for the same search term again but with different filters, it won't be included twice under Recent Searches. We'll just update the filter criteria for that search term.
- To clear your history of recent searches, click
Clearat the top right of the Recent Searches section of the Quick Find window.
Using database search
Each database in Notion comes with its own search bar at the top right (or right above the database if you're on mobile).
- When you search for something in the database search bar, it will surface database entries that contain your search term in the page title or property values (but not the page contents).
- For example, if you search for "Urgent," your database will quickly filter to only display entries that contain "Urgent" in the title or property values:
Database search vs. Quick Find
- Quick Find will search the content included inside database pages. Database search will not.
- Database search will search for property values such as
Status=In Progressor the names of database entries added in a relation column. Quick Find will not.
FAQs
Are there any limitations to the type of content that can be searched with Quick Find?
There's a few content types that Quick Find won't surface, unfortunately. We're always working on improvements, but here's a current list of limitations:
- Date mentions such as
@Todayor@last Tuesdaywill be included in search results, but other @mentions of pages and people such as@Dougor@Roadmapwon't be included in search results.
- Comments & discussions are not included in search results.
- Property values such as select and multi-select tags are not included in search results. You can use database search for this though!
What about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters?
We recently upgraded Quick Find to improve the accuracy of search queries with CJK characters! That said, we're planning for more improvements as we go 💪 Please feel free to share any search feedback with team@makenotion.com, or click
? at the bottom right of Notion to send us a message.Is there a way to customize the preset filters, recent pages, or recent searches?
Not at the moment. You can define your own filters by using the
More filters section of the filter sidebar in Quick Find.To customize your own list of frequently visited pages, you can use the
Favorite button at the top right of any page. Click that to pin the page to the top of your sidebar.Related guides
Something we didn't cover?
Message us in the app by clicking
? at the bottom right on desktop (or in your sidebar on mobile). Or email us at team@makenotion.com ✌️