Indexed Search

Core Search has no index: every query reads every note in the vault and runs its matcher on each one. On a vault of tens of thousands of notes that is half a second to a second per query, every time. The fast search plugins answer in a search box of their own, with their own query language and their own, different results.

Indexed Search keeps core Search and makes it fast. It keeps a trigram index of your notes in IndexedDB and, for each query, hands core Search only the notes that can possibly match, so core reads and checks those instead of the whole vault. The pane, the query syntax and the matcher are core's own, so the results are exactly the ones core Search gives without the plugin. On a 37,000-note vault, queries came back 4 to 5 times faster. The index lives outside memory, adds nothing measurable to it at rest, and survives a restart or a crash without a rebuild.

More screenshots

Demo vault

The documentation is a demo vault. Every feature has a note that explains what it does and why you would want it, with a button that runs a search in the Search pane so you can watch it happen.

Start reading here — it is plain markdown, so it works on GitHub with nothing installed.

A copy of the vault ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:

1. Running the Indexed Search: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading indexed-search-demo-vault.zip from the Releases. It unzips into a single indexed-search-demo-vault-<version> folder.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

What it does

1. Narrows core Search: for every query typed into the Search pane, core reads only the notes the index cannot rule out. A note can contain lantern only if it contains lan, ant, nte, ter and ern, so every note missing one of them is skipped unread: see Core Search, narrowed.
2. The same query language: plain terms, phrases, OR, -, parentheses, regular expressions, file:, path:, tag:, content:, match-case: and ignore-case: all narrow. Any query part the index cannot check, such as a term of one or two characters, /\d+/, a property or line:, leaves core to read every note, as it does without the plugin.
3. Exactly core's results: the index only ever rules notes out, and core's own matcher decides. Canvas files, attachments, notes edited since they were indexed and notes not indexed yet always stay in, and a note edited while a search runs is checked again.
4. A persistent index: the index is kept in IndexedDB, one small record per trigram and segment of notes, never in the heap. It is built once, in about a minute and a half on a 37,000-note vault, and kept current as notes change; on restart only the notes that changed are read again. A crash or a forced quit loses at most the last batch.
5. A switch to compare: the shouldNarrowSearch setting turns narrowing off, with no restart, so you can time core Search alone or rule the plugin out. Every setting is listed by its data.json key in Settings.

See also

My other Obsidian resources

Last searched for similar plugins on 2026-11-01.

For plugin developers

Indexed Search publishes a typed API (contract 1.0.0) whose search(query) answers a query written in core Search's own syntax with exactly the files core Search lists, because core's own parser and matcher decide. It is declared in api.d.ts with its contract in api-contract.ts. How to reach it, its options and what a hit carries are in 03 For plugin developers.

Installation

The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.

Beta versions

To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

By default, debug messages for this plugin (id: indexed-search) are hidden.

If you need to enable them refer to the documentation.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in the CHANGELOG.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING to get set up.

Support

Support this plugin

Filing an issue (for AI agents and humans)

Open issues through the issue forms, not as blank issues.

To report a bug from inside Obsidian, run the Indexed Search: Report a bug command. It opens the bug form with the plugin version, the Obsidian version and your operating system already filled in.

Filing from the CLI or the API (gh issue create --body, or an AI agent filing for you) skips the form, and gh issue create --template cannot load an issue form. In that case, open the matching form in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/, copy every field as a ### <label> heading in the form's order, and fill in each one. Always state the plugin version, the Obsidian version and your operating system.

License

© mnaoumov