Searching in GitLab

Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
Offering: GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated

Find what you need in a growing codebase or expanding organization. Save time by looking up specific code, issues, merge requests, and other content across your projects. Choose from three types of search to match your needs: basic search, advanced search, and exact code search.

For code search, GitLab uses these types in this order:

Exact code search: where you can use exact match and regular expression modes.
Advanced search: when exact code search is not available.
Basic search: when exact code search and advanced search are not available or when you search against a non-default branch. This type does not support group or global search.

Available scopes

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

Scope	Global ¹	Group	Project
Code	no	no	yes
Comments	no	no	yes
Commits	no	no	yes
Epics	no	yes	no
Issues	yes	yes	yes
Merge requests	yes	yes	yes
Milestones	yes	yes	yes
Projects	yes	yes	no
Users	yes	yes	yes
Wikis	no	no	yes

Footnotes:

An administrator can disable global search scopes.

Specify a search type

Version history

Introduced in GitLab 17.4.

To specify a search type, set the search_type URL parameter as follows:

search_type=zoekt for exact code search
search_type=advanced for advanced search
search_type=basic for basic search

search_type replaces the deprecated basic_search parameter. For more information, see issue 477333.

Restrict search access

Offering: GitLab Self-Managed

Version history

Restricting global search to authenticated users introduced in GitLab 13.4 with a flag named block_anonymous_global_searches. Disabled by default.
Allowing search for unauthenticated users introduced in GitLab 16.7 with a flag named allow_anonymous_searches. Enabled by default.
Restricting global search to authenticated users generally available in GitLab 17.11. Feature flag block_anonymous_global_searches removed.
Allowing search for unauthenticated users generally available in GitLab 18.0. Feature flag allow_anonymous_searches removed.

Prerequisites:

You must have administrator access to the instance.

By default, requests to /search and global search are available for unauthenticated users.

To restrict /search to authenticated users only, do one of the following:

Restrict visibility levels for the project or group.
Restrict access in the Admin area:
1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. Select Settings > Search.
3. Expand Advanced search.
4. Clear the Allow unauthenticated users to use search checkbox.
5. Select Save changes.

To restrict global search to authenticated users only:

In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
Select Settings > Search.
Expand Visibility and access controls
Select the Restrict global search to authenticated users only checkbox.
Select Save changes.

Disable global search scopes

Offering: GitLab Self-Managed

Version history

Introduced in GitLab 17.9.

Prerequisites:

You must have administrator access to the instance.

To improve the performance of your instance's global search, you can disable one or more search scopes. All global search scopes are enabled by default on GitLab Self-Managed instances.

To disable one or more global search scopes:

In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
Select Settings > Search.
Expand Visibility and access controls.
Clear the checkboxes for the scopes you want to disable.
Select Save changes.

Configure a default search scope

Offering: GitLab Self-Managed

Prerequisites:

You must have administrator access to the instance.

By default, when users do not select a search scope, a scope is selected automatically based on context and availability. To configure a default search scope instead:

In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
Select Settings > Search.
Expand Visibility and access controls.
From the Default search scope dropdown list, select a scope. For automatic selection, select System default (automatic).
Select Save changes.

Users can override the default scope by selecting another scope. If the default scope is not available (for example, code in global search), a scope is selected automatically.

Global search validation

Version history

Support for partial matches in issue search removed in GitLab 14.9 with a flag named issues_full_text_search. Disabled by default.
Generally available in GitLab 16.2. Feature flag issues_full_text_search removed.

Global search ignores and logs as abusive any search that includes:

Fewer than two characters
A term longer than 100 characters (URL search terms must not exceed 200 characters)
A stop word only (for example, the, and, or if)
An unknown scope
group_id or project_id that is not completely numeric
repository_ref or project_ref with special characters not allowed by Git refname

Global search only flags with an error any search that includes more than:

4096 characters
64 terms

Partial matches are not supported in issue search. For example, when you search issues for play, the query does not return issues that contain display. However, the query matches all possible variations of the string (for example, plays).

Autocomplete suggestions

Version history

Showing only users from authorized projects and groups introduced in GitLab 17.10 with flags named users_search_scoped_to_authorized_namespaces_advanced_search, users_search_scoped_to_authorized_namespaces_basic_search, and users_search_scoped_to_authorized_namespaces_basic_search_by_ids. Disabled by default.
Generally available in GitLab 17.11. Feature flags users_search_scoped_to_authorized_namespaces_advanced_search, users_search_scoped_to_authorized_namespaces_basic_search, and users_search_scoped_to_authorized_namespaces_basic_search_by_ids removed.

The availability of this feature is controlled by feature flags. For more information, see the history.

As you type in the search box, autocomplete suggestions are displayed for:

Projects and groups
Users from authorized projects and groups
Help pages
Project features (for example, milestones)
Settings (for example, user settings)
Recently viewed merge requests
Recently viewed issues and epics
GitLab Flavored Markdown references for issues in a project

Search in all GitLab

To search in all GitLab:

On the top bar, select Search or go to.
Type your search query. You must type at least two characters.
Press Enter to search, or select from the list.

The results are displayed. To filter the results, on the left sidebar, select a filter.

Search in a project

To search in a project:

On the top bar, select Search or go to and find your project.
Select Search or go to again and type the string you want to search for.
Press Enter to search, or select from the list.

The results are displayed. To filter the results, on the left sidebar, select a filter.

Include archived projects in search results

Version history

Introduced in GitLab 16.1 with a flag named search_projects_hide_archived for project search. Disabled by default.
Generally available in GitLab 16.6 for all search scopes.

By default, archived projects are excluded from search results. To include archived projects in search results:

On the search page, on the left sidebar, select the Include archived checkbox.
On the left sidebar, select Apply.

Search for code

To search for code in a project:

On the top bar, select Search or go to and find your project.
Select Search or go to again and type the code you want to search for.
Press Enter to search, or select from the list.

Code search shows only the first result in the file. To search for code in all GitLab, ask your administrator to enable advanced search.

View Git blame from code search

Version history

Introduced in GitLab 14.7.

After you find search results, you can view who made the last change to the line where the results were found.

From the code search result, hover over the line number.
On the left, select View blame.

Filter code search results by language

Version history

Introduced in GitLab 15.10.

To filter code search results by one or more languages:

On the code search page, on the left sidebar, select one or more languages.
On the left sidebar, select Apply.

Search for a commit SHA

To search for a commit SHA:

On the top bar, select Search or go to and find your project.
Select Search or go to again and type the commit SHA you want to search for.
Press Enter to search, or select from the list.

If a single result is returned, GitLab redirects to the commit result and gives you the option to return to the search results page.

Syntax

Basic search uses exact substring matching with the following options:

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`

Examples

Query	Description
`rails -filename:gemfile.lock`	Returns `rails` in all files except the `gemfile.lock` file.
`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`).