Search and commands
On this page
Press Ctrl+K (⌘+K on a Mac) anywhere in the app to find anything or do anything by name. It also works while you are typing in a field, except in a task's notes, where the same keys insert a link.
Open the box#
Use the shortcut, or the magnifying glass at the top of the screen. On a phone the box opens as a sheet from the bottom. Type, move with ↑ and ↓, and press Enter; Esc closes it and returns you where you were.
With nothing typed, the box lists what you can do right now (for the selected task, the project or view you are in) and what you picked most recently on this device.
What it finds#
- Tasks, by title and by the text of their notes. Open tasks come first; completed ones are marked. Deleted tasks never show up. Picking a task opens its project with the task's panel open.
- Projects (archived ones are marked), labels, saved views and dashboards, and the Settings sections you can see.
Matching ignores case and accents and finds words by their start or by letters in order: cafe finds Café, rp finds Renew passport. Exact matches come first, then word starts, then the rest; among equal matches, what you picked often on this device comes first. At most 50 results are listed; keep typing to narrow them down.
Filter queries inline#
If what you type is a filter query, such as @errand & p1, due <= friday or #Work & overdue, the box lists the matching tasks and offers Open in Filter view. Plain words are always a text search, so a half-typed query never shows an error.
Commands#
Every action has a name in the box: go to any view, calendar or Settings section; act on the selected task (complete, priority, labels, assign, estimate, deadline, defer, park, This Evening, schedule, skip an occurrence, move to the Trash); act on the project, saved view, label or section you are in (everything in their menus, such as Pin to sidebar or Archive); save the current filter as a view; create a task, project, label or dashboard; sync now; show the keyboard shortcuts; turn Vim keybindings on or off; search Help for what you typed. Each command shows its shortcut, so the box also teaches the keys.
Commands are listed only when they apply: with no task selected there are no task commands, and a viewer of a shared project doesn't see the ones that would change it.
Privacy#
The search runs on your device, over the data already stored there. Nothing you type is sent to the server, and nothing is indexed on it. This works offline and for end-to-end encrypted accounts too: your device holds the decrypted text and searches that.