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)

For Advanced Search:

You can only search files smaller than 1 MB. For self-managed GitLab instances, an administrator can change this limit.
You can't use any of the following characters in the search query:
```
. , : ; / ` ' = ? $ & ^ | ~ < > ( ) { } [ ] @
```
Only the default branch of a project is indexed for code search. In a non-default branch, basic search is used.
Search results show only the first match in a file, but there might be more results in that file.

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"`
`\|`	Or	`display \| banner`
`+`	And	`display +banner`
`-`	Exclude	`display -banner`
`*`	Partial	`bug error 50*`
`\`	Escape	`\*md`
`#`	Issue ID	`#23456`
`!`	Merge request ID	`!23456`

Code search

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

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.