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Searching issues and pull requests

You can search for issues and pull requests on GitHub and narrow the results using these search qualifiers in any combination.

You can search for issues and pull requests globally across all of GitHub, or search for issues and pull requests within a particular organization. For more information, see About searching on GitHub.

Tip

  • This article contains example searches on GitHub.com, but you can use the same search filters on other GitHub platforms.
  • For a list of search syntaxes that you can add to any search qualifier to further improve your results, see Understanding the search syntax.
  • Use quotations around multi-word search terms. For example, if you want to search for issues with the label "In progress," you'd search for label:"in progress". Search is not case sensitive.
  • Use a minus (hyphen) symbol to exclude results that match a qualifier. For example, to ignore issues created by the "octocat" user, you'd use -author:octocat in your search. Note that this does not work for missing metadata qualifiers.
  • You can focus your cursor on the search bar above the issue or pull request list with a keyboard shortcut. For more information, see Keyboard shortcuts.

Search only issues or pull requests

By default, GitHub search will return both issues and pull requests. However, you can restrict search results to just issues or pull requests using the type or is qualifier.

QualifierExample
type:prcat type:pr matches pull requests with the word "cat."
type:issuegithub commenter:defunkt type:issue matches issues that contain the word "github," and have a comment by @defunkt.
is:prevent is:pr matches pull requests with the word "event."
is:issueis:issue label:bug is:closed matches closed issues with the label "bug."

Search by the title, body, or comments

With the in qualifier you can restrict your search to the title, body, comments, or any combination of these. When you omit this qualifier, the title, body, and comments are all searched.

QualifierExample
in:titlewarning in:title matches issues with "warning" in their title.
in:bodyerror in:title,body matches issues with "error" in their title or body.
in:commentsshipit in:comments matches issues mentioning "shipit" in their comments.

Search within a user's or organization's repositories

To search issues and pull requests in all repositories owned by a certain user or organization, you can use the user or org qualifier. To search issues and pull requests in a specific repository, you can use the repo qualifier.

If you have access to pull requests in more than 10,000 repositories, you will need to limit your search to a specific organization, personal account, or repository to see results.

QualifierExample
user:USERNAMEuser:defunkt ubuntu matches issues with the word "ubuntu" from repositories owned by @defunkt.
org:ORGNAMEorg:github matches issues in repositories owned by the GitHub organization.
repo:USERNAME/REPOSITORYrepo:mozilla/shumway created:<2012-03-01 matches issues from @mozilla's shumway project that were created before March 2012.

Search by open or closed state

You can filter issues and pull requests based on whether they're open or closed using the state or is qualifier.

QualifierExample
state:openlibraries state:open mentions:vmg matches open issues that mention @vmg with the word "libraries."
state:closeddesign state:closed in:body matches closed issues with the word "design" in the body.
is:openperformance is:open is:issue matches open issues with the word "performance."
is:closedandroid is:closed matches closed issues and pull requests with the word "android."

Search for pull requests in the merge queue

You can also use the is qualifier to find pull requests that are queued to merge.

QualifierExample
is:queuedis:queued matches pull requests that are currently queued to merge.

Search by the reason an issue was closed

You can filter issues based on the reason given when the issue was closed, using the reason qualifier.

QualifierExample
reason:completedlibraries is:closed reason:completed matches issues with the word "libraries" that were closed as "completed."
reason:"not planned"libraries is:closed reason:"not planned" matches issues with the word "libraries" that were closed as "not planned."

Filter by repository visibility

You can filter by the visibility of the repository containing the issues and pull requests using the is qualifier. For more information, see About repositories.

QualifierExample
is:publicis:public matches issues and pull requests in public repositories.
is:internalis:internal matches issues and pull requests in internal repositories.
is:privateis:private cupcake matches issues and pull requests that contain the word "cupcake" in private repositories you can access.

Search by author

The author qualifier finds issues and pull requests created by a certain user or integration account.

QualifierExample
author:USERNAMEcool author:gjtorikian matches issues and pull requests with the word "cool" that were created by @gjtorikian.
in:body author:USERNAMEbootstrap in:body author:mdo matches issues written by @mdo that contain the word "bootstrap" in the body.
author:app/USERNAMEauthor:app/robot matches issues created by the integration account named "robot."
-author:app/USERNAME