Search your Vault

Category: Your Vault
On this page:

    PassageWay Vaults can be easily searched to quickly surface relevant Vault items. Basic search queries can be made in any Bitwarden client application, and advanced full-text search queries can be made in Web Vaults, Desktop Apps, and Browser Extensions.

    The potential results available to any search operation is dependent on what is currently opened through the Filter menu or Navigation, for example:

    • If All Items is selected, entered search queries will use all possible Vault items as potential results.
    • If the Login Type is selected, entered search queries will use all Login items as potential results.
    • If My Folder is selected, entered search queries will use all items in that Folder as potential results (not including items in a nested Folder).

    The placeholder text in the search box will transform to indicate the current search location:

    Search a Folder
    Search a Folder

    Basic search is available in all Bitwarden client applications. Entering a basic search query (e.g. Github or myusername) will search for the entered string in the following Vault item fields:

    • Item Name
    • For Login, Username
    • For Login, URI
    • For Card, Brand or last four digits
    • For Identity, Name

    For your convenience, basic search automatically includes leading and trailing wildcards. For example, searching for mail will return Vault items with the name gmail as well as email.

    Full-text search, implemented in your Vault using a programming library called Lunr, provides ways to invoke high-performance queries for Vault items. Full-text search is available in Web Vaults, Desktop Applications, and Browser Extensions.

    To invoke full-text search, start your search query with a “greater than” (>) character.

    When constructing a full-text search, an indexed field name should immediately follow the “greater than” (>) character. The following fields of Vault items are indexed and searchable:

    • shortid: First 8 characters of the item’s ID.
    • organizationid: ID of the item’s Organization (if it belongs to one).
    • name: Item’s designated name.
    • subtitle: Depending on Item Type; Login Username, Card Brand or last four digits, or Identity Name.
    • notes: Item’s notes.
    • fields: Name or Value. Only Text type field values are included.
    • attachments: Name of the attached file.
    • login.username: Login item’s username.
    • login.uris: Login item’s URI hostname value.

    Once a field is specified, search for a value in that field using a colon (:) delimiter, for example:

    • >login.username:jsmith will search for Login items with jsmith specified as the Username.
    • >name:Turbo Tax will search for any Vault items with Turbo Tax specified as the Name.
    • >fields:Security Question will search for any Vault items with a custom text field with the Name Security Question.

    Wildcards and Advanced Search Parameters

    When constructing a full-text search, you can apply the asterisk (*) as a wildcard character for specified search values, for example:

    • >organizationid:* will search for all Vault items that belong to an Organization.
    • >-organizationid:* will search for all Vault items that do not belong to an Organization.
    • >login.username:*@gmail.com will search for any Login item Username that ends in @gmail.com.
    Tip

    Lunr provides a variety of advanced query options beyond wildcards, including:

    • Term Presence using a + (must contain) or - (must not contain) prefix.

      For example, if you have multiple Gmail accounts, searching >name:Gmail -Work would return a Vault item with the name Personal Gmail but would not return a Vault item with the name Work Gmail.

    • Fuzzy Matching using a tilde (~) prefix combined with an edit distance integer.

      For example, searching >name:email~1 would return both Vault items with the name email and Vault items with the name gmail.

    Learn more about writing advanced search queries using Lunr’s Searching Guide.