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.

Accessing the search

Interaction

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

  1. Set the text to search for in the Search string field.
    1. Apart from searching for words literally, there is also the possibility to search for attributes or properties of notes.
    2. See the examples below for more information.
  2. To limit the search to a note and its sub-children, set a note in Ancestor.
    1. This value is also pre-filled if the search is triggered from a hoisted note or a workspace.
    2. To search the entire database, keep the value empty.
  3. To limit the search to only a few levels of hierarchy (e.g. look in sub-children but not in sub-sub-children of a note), set the depth field to one of the provided values.
  4. In addition to that, the search can be configured via the Add search options buttons, as described in the follow-up section.
  5. Press Search to trigger the search. The results are displayed below the search configuration pane.
  6. The Search & Execute actions button is only relevant if at least one action has been added (as described in the section below).
  7. The Save to note will create a new note with the search configuration. For more information, see Saved Search.

Search options

Click on which search option to apply from the Add search option section.

The options available are:

  1. Search script
    1. This feature allows writing a Code note that will handle the search on its own.
  2. Fast search
    1. The search will not look into the content of the notes, but it will still look into note titles and attributes, relations (based on the search query).
    2. This method can speed up the search considerably for large databases.
  3. Include archived
    1. Archived Notes will also be included in the results, whereas otherwise they would be ignored.
  4. Order by
    1. Allows changing the criteria for ordering the results, for example to order by creation date or alphabetically instead of by relevancy (default).
    2. It's also possible to change the order (ascending or descending) of the results.
  5. Limit
    1. Limits the results to a given maximum.
    2. This can help if the number of results would otherwise be high, at the cost of not being able to view all the results.
  6. Debug
    1. This will print additional information in the server log (see  Error logs), regarding how the search expression was parsed.
    2. This function is especially useful after understanding the search functionality in detail, in order to determine why a complex search query is not working as expected.
  7. Action
    1. Apart from just searching, it is also possible to apply actions such as to add a label or a relation to the notes that have been matched by the search.
    2. Unlike other search configurations, here it's possible to apply the same action multiple times (i.e. in order to be able to apply multiple labels to notes).
    3. The actions given are the same as the ones in Bulk Actions, which is an alternative for operating directly with notes within the Note Tree.
    4. After defining the actions, first press Search to check the matched notes and then press Search & Execute actions to trigger the actions.

Simple Note Search Examples

Fuzzy Search

Trilium supports fuzzy search operators that find results with typos or spelling variations:

Important notes about fuzzy search:

Advanced Use Cases

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.

Progressive Search Strategy

Trilium uses a progressive search strategy that performs exact matching first, then adds fuzzy matching when needed.

How Progressive Search Works

  1. Phase 1 - Exact Matching: When you search, Trilium first looks for exact matches of your search terms. This handles the vast majority of searches (90%+) and returns results almost instantly.
  2. Phase 2 - Fuzzy Fallback: If Phase 1 doesn't find enough high-quality results (fewer than 5 results with good relevance scores), Trilium automatically adds fuzzy matching to find results with typos or spelling variations.
  3. Result Ordering: Exact matches always appear before fuzzy matches, regardless of individual scores. This ensures that when you search for "project", notes containing the exact word "project" will appear before notes containing similar words like "projects" or "projection".

Progressive Search Behavior

Search Performance

Search system specifications:

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. 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

Search Configuration

Parameters

Parameter Value Description
MIN_FUZZY_TOKEN_LENGTH 3 Minimum characters for fuzzy matching
MAX_EDIT_DISTANCE 2 Maximum character changes allowed
RESULT_SUFFICIENCY_THRESHOLD 5 Minimum exact results before fuzzy fallback
MAX_CONTENT_SIZE 10MB Maximum note content size for search processing

Limits