---
title: "Search and Spotlight"
description: "Quick-jump to a note via Spotlight and OmniSearch, plus text filtering in the Feed."
---

# Search and Spotlight

Notarium has two distinct search surfaces, and it helps to tell them apart from the start. **Spotlight** and **OmniSearch** are quick-jump: you type part of a title and jump straight to the note you want. The **Feed's text filter** (`?q=`) is corpus search: it narrows the list of notes and composes with filters by folder, tag, and date. In short: one is "jump to a note," the other is "filter the selection."

## Spotlight — jump to a note

Spotlight is a centered, keyboard-driven panel that sits on top of the page. You can open it three ways, and all three lead to the same panel:

- **Cmd/Ctrl+P** — the quick switcher (Spotlight);
- the **search** icon in the left rail;
- the **`/`** hotkey.

> [!tip] Keyboard layout doesn't get in the way
> The panel listens for the physical key, not the character. On a Cyrillic layout, `Cmd/Ctrl+P` (where that physical key produces the Cyrillic letter *ze*) and `/` work exactly as they do on a Latin one.

How the panel behaves:

- **Empty query → "Recent."** First come the notes you recently **opened** (the list is kept per space), then recently **modified** ones fill in. The quick switcher's first job is to bring you back to where you just were.
- **Typing → notes.** Each keystroke refines the results through hybrid search (lexical + semantic where vector search is enabled; a graph boost over links is an extra channel, off by default; without vector search the query falls back to full-text search — without error). Matches are highlighted in the title and the snippet.
- **Each result row** shows a date and the parent folder's path, so you can tell apart notes that share a name.
- **Keyboard:** `↑`/`↓` to select, `Enter` to open, **Cmd/Ctrl+Enter** to open in a new tab, `Esc` to close.

![Spotlight: matches highlighted, with the date and parent folder in every result row](/media/app-search-light.webp)

Spotlight works within the **active space**: it searches notes in the current space.

## OmniSearch — the top-bar field

**OmniSearch** is the same search field, pulled out into the center of the top bar on wide screens. It shares its suggestion data with Spotlight: as you type, the same quick-jump results drop down below. The top "search in the Feed" row (or just `Enter`) hands the query off to the **Feed** as a `?q=` text filter.

The field is a convenience for large monitors: on narrow screens it's hidden entirely. That's no loss of access — search is always one gesture away via the rail icon, `Cmd/Ctrl+P`, and `/`.

## The Feed's text filter

In the [Feed](/docs/guides/feed/), the `q` query is a third filter axis alongside folders and tags: a single query language, `folder ∧ tag ∧ text`. Here what matters is **term occurrence**, not semantic closeness: the filter uses the lexical search channel (full-text), so a "semantic neighbor" without a shared word won't make it into the selection. The query lives in the URL (`?q=`), while the Feed window, the exact `total` counter, and the date histogram describe exactly that narrowed selection.

To learn how hybrid search itself works under the hood, see [Search](/docs/concepts/search/). The keyboard shortcuts for opening it are on the [Keyboard shortcuts](/docs/guides/hotkeys/) page.