Advanced search (PREMIUM)

Moved to GitLab Premium in 13.9.

You can use advanced search for faster, more efficient search across the entire GitLab instance. Advanced search is based on Elasticsearch, a purpose-built full-text search engine you can horizontally scale to get results in up to a second in most cases.

You can find code you want to update in all projects at once to save maintenance time and promote innersourcing.

You can use advanced search in:

Projects
Issues
Merge requests
Milestones
Users
Epics (in groups only)
Code
Comments
Commits
Project wikis (not group wikis)

Enable advanced search

On GitLab.com, advanced search is enabled for groups with paid subscriptions.
For self-managed GitLab instances, an administrator must enable advanced search.

Syntax

Advanced search uses Elasticsearch syntax. The syntax supports both exact and fuzzy search queries.

Syntax	Description	Example
`"`	Exact search	`"gem sidekiq"`
`~`	Fuzzy search	`J~ Doe`
`\|`	Or	`display \| banner`
`+`	And	`display +banner`
`-`	Exclude	`display -banner`
`*`	Partial	`bug error 50*`
`\`	Escape	`\*md`
`#`	Issue ID	`#23456`
`!`	Merge request ID	`!23456`

Refining user search

Introduced in GitLab 15.10.

In user search, a fuzzy query is used by default. You can refine your search with Elasticsearch syntax.

Code search

Syntax	Description	Example
`filename:`	Filename	`filename:*spec.rb`
`path:`	Repository location ¹	`path:spec/workers/`
`extension:`	File extension without `.` ²	`extension:js`
`blob:`	Git object ID ²	`blob:998707*`

path: returns matches for full paths or subpaths.
extension: and blob: return exact matches only.

Examples

Query	Description
`rails -filename:gemfile.lock`	Returns `rails` in all files except the `gemfile.lock` file.
`RSpec.describe Resolvers -*builder`	Returns `RSpec.describe Resolvers` that does not start with `builder`.
`bug \| (display +banner)`	Returns `bug` or both `display` and `banner`.
`helper -extension:yml -extension:js`	Returns `helper` in all files except files with a `.yml` or `.js` extension.
`helper path:lib/git`	Returns `helper` in all files with a `lib/git*` path (for example, `spec/lib/gitlab`).

Known issues

You can only search files smaller than 1 MB. For self-managed GitLab instances, an administrator can change this limit.
You can only use advanced search on the default branch of a project.
The search query must not contain any of the following characters:
```
. , : ; / ` ' = ? $ & ^ | < > ( ) { } [ ] @
```
Search results show only the first match in a file.