Advanced search

Use advanced search to find exactly what you need across your entire GitLab instance.

With advanced search:

Identify code patterns across all projects to refactor shared components more efficiently.
Locate security vulnerabilities across your entire organization’s codebase and dependencies.
Track usage of deprecated functions or libraries throughout all repositories.
Find discussions buried in issues, merge requests, or comments.
Discover existing solutions instead of reinventing functionality that already exists.

Advanced search works in:

Use advanced search

Prerequisites:

Advanced search must be enabled:
- For GitLab.com and GitLab Dedicated, advanced search is enabled by default in paid subscriptions.
- For GitLab Self-Managed, an administrator must enable advanced search.

To use advanced search:

You can also use advanced search in a project or group.

Searching comments on issues introduced in GitLab 18.0 with a feature flag named search_work_item_queries_notes. Disabled by default.
Searching comments on issues enabled on GitLab.com in GitLab 18.1.
Searching comments on issues generally available in GitLab 18.6. Feature flag search_work_item_queries_notes removed.
Searching comments on merge requests introduced in GitLab 18.6 with a feature flag named search_merge_request_queries_notes. Disabled by default.
Searching comments on merge requests generally available in GitLab 18.7. Feature flag search_merge_request_queries_notes removed.
Groups scope introduced in GitLab 19.4 with a feature flag named elasticsearch_group_search. Disabled by default.
Groups scope generally available in GitLab 19.5. Feature flag elasticsearch_group_search removed.

Scopes describe the type of data you’re searching. The following scopes are available for advanced search:

Advanced search uses simple_query_string, which supports both exact and fuzzy queries.

When you search for a user, the fuzzy query is used by default. You can refine user search with simple_query_string.

Syntax	Description	Example
`filename:`	Filename	`filename:*spec.rb`
`path:`	Repository location (full or partial matches)	`path:spec/workers/`
`extension:`	File extension without `.` (exact matches only)	`extension:js`
`blob:`	Git object ID (exact matches only)	`blob:998707*`

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`).

You can search only files smaller than 1 MB. For GitLab Self-Managed, an administrator can set a limit on the maximum file size indexed.
You can use advanced search only on the default branch of a project. For more information, see issue 229966.
The search query must not contain any of the following characters:
```
. , : ; / ` ' = ? $ & ^ | < > ( ) { } [ ] @
```
Search results show only the first match in a file.

An administrator can disable global search scopes. On GitLab Self-Managed, global search is not available when limited indexing is enabled by default. An administrator can enable global search for limited indexing. ↩︎
On GitLab.com, global search is not enabled for code, commits, and wikis. ↩︎
Group search returns the subgroups of the group you’re searching in, not the group itself. The backfill_groups_to_elasticsearch advanced search migration must be complete before this scope returns results. ↩︎
When you search work items and merge requests, results include comments that match your search term. ↩︎ ↩︎
Advanced search returns only project milestones because group milestones are not indexed in Elasticsearch. For more information, see issue 428589. ↩︎

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