Search

Find any note by a word in it — or in a PDF, a picture or a recording attached to it — and save the searches you run often.

Results appear as you type. A search ignores capitals and accents — resume finds résumé — and every word you type must appear in a note for it to match.

Where to search

The search field is at the right end of the toolbar. While a note's Info is open, a magnifier stands in its place beside the Info button: click it, or press ⇧⌘F, and Info closes and the field is ready. While you use the field, a bar above the list lets you choose where to look:

This List narrows what the list is already showing. The operators and Save Search… work here.
Everywhere searches your whole library, and shows the notes, tasks and tags it finds in the list.

The field's placeholder says what it searches — for example, Search tasks while the Tasks list is showing.

The field above a list searches that list. To search your whole library, use the field above the sidebar.

The field above a list searches that list. To search your whole library, use the search field in the capsule at the bottom of the screen.

What is searched

Besides the text of your notes, a search looks inside what is attached to them:

PDFs, pictures, and Word and Excel files;
text typed onto a picture, and highlights in a PDF;
a recording's name, and the transcript NotaBene writes for it.

When you open a note a search found, every place the word appears is marked in blue, and an attachment that matched — a scan or a PDF, for example — is washed blue with a magnifier on it. The marks are only drawn on screen; nothing is written into the note, and they go away when the search ends. To step through the matches, see Find in a note or a PDF.

The operators

Type an operator into the search field to narrow a search. You don't have to remember them: on the Mac, the field's suggestions list them; on iPhone and iPad, tap the filter button inside the search field. Choose a line and it is written into the field.

tag:work — notes with the tag work
tag:wor* — notes with a tag that begins with wor
notebook:"At Home" — notes in the notebook At Home; use quotation marks around a name with spaces
intitle:contract — notes with contract in the title
created:2026-08-10 — notes created on that day or later
created:today — notes created today
updated:day-7 — notes changed in the last seven days; week-2, month-1 and year-1 count back the same way, and yesterday works too
-tag:done — leaves out notes with the tag done
-milk — leaves out notes with the word milk

The operators are the same in every language, so a search you write down keeps working. In the calendar, where the field searches events, operators aren't offered.

Saved searches

Save a search you run often, and it gets a row of its own in the sidebar, under a header that folds. Pick the row to run the search again.

Use Save Search… while searching This List. Click the arrow beside the sidebar header to fold the list of saved searches.

Save the search from the search field. Tap anywhere on the header, name included, to fold the list of saved searches.

A saved search can also be a shortcut. Deleting a saved search asks first — and the notes it finds are not deleted.

See Also: Find in a note or a PDF · Spotlight · Tags · Shortcuts