Skip to main content

This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-03-15. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Searching issues and pull requests

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

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

Tips:

  • This article contains example searches on the GitHub.com website, but you can use the same search filters on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

  • 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.

  • 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 Enterprise Server 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."