Searching for messages
Zulip has a powerful search engine under its hood. Search for messages using
the search bar at the top of the screen.
Example
stream:design has:link -is:starred new logo
Searches for messages in #design
that have a link, that you haven't
starred, and that contain the words new
and logo
.
The permalink for that search (web only) will look something like
this:
https://your-zulip-url/#narrow/stream/123-design/has/link/-is/starred/search/new.20logo
.
List of operators
As you start typing, Zulip will suggest possible operator completions.
Operators can be used with keywords, or on their own. For example,
stream:design logo
will search for the word logo
within #design
stream:design
will navigate to #design
Here is the full list of search operators.
Excluding messages
Zulip's search operators can be negated, to exclude messages matching
the rule. For example, stream:design -is:resolved -has:image
will
match all messages that don't contain an image and were sent to
unresolved topics in the #design
stream.
Searching shared history
Zulip's stream permissions model allows
access to the full history of public streams and private streams with
shared history, including messages sent
before you joined the stream (or organization) or those sent to public
streams you are not subscribed to.
By default, Zulip searches messages in your history, i.e. the
messages you actually received. This avoids cluttering search results
with irrelevant messages from public streams you're not interested in.
If you'd like to instead search the organization's shared history, any
query using the stream:
or streams:
operators will search all
messages that you have access to in the selected stream(s). For
example:
streams:public keyword
searches for keyword
in all public
streams in the organization.
streams:public sender:user@example.com
searches for all messages
sent by the user to any public stream.
Words and phrases
Most searches consist of a list of operators followed by a list of keywords.
new logo
: Search for messages with both new
and logo
.
"new logo"
: Search for messages with the phrase "new logo"
.
Zulip does some basic stemming, so wave
will match waves
and
waving
. Keywords are case-insensitive, so wave
will also match Wave
.
Emoji are included in searches, so if you search for octopus
it will
include messages with
.
Note that Zulip ignores common words like a
, the
, and about 100
others. A quirk in Zulip's current implementation means that if all of your
keywords are ignored, we'll return 0 search results.