Using GitHub Code Search

You can use suggestions, completions and saved searches in the upgraded search interface to quickly find what you are looking for across GitHub.

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GitHub indexes repositories you own and repositories in organizations you are a member of, whether public, private, or internal. This means that you can search across all of your repositories, in addition to the public repositories on GitHub that have already been indexed. Only users with permission to view your code will be able to see your code in search results. Forks are indexed and searchable in the same way as other repositories.

Not all code is indexed, and you can currently only search the default branches of repositories. For more information on known limitations, see About GitHub Code Search.

You must be logged in to a GitHub account to use code search, including for searching code in public repositories.

You can search using the search interface on GitHub. Using suggestions, completions, and saved searches, you can quickly find what you are looking for, often without having to fully type a query or view the search results page.

For more information about the search syntax of code search, see Understanding GitHub Code Search syntax.

Note that the syntax and qualifiers for searching for non-code content, such as issues, users, and discussions, is not the same as the syntax for code search. For more information on non-code search, see About searching on GitHub and Searching on GitHub.

  1. In the top navigation of GitHub, click the search bar.

  2. Under the search bar, you will see a list of suggestions organized by category, including recent searches and suggested repositories, teams, and projects that you have access to. You can also see a list of saved searches that you have created. For more information on saved searches, see Creating and managing saved searches.

    Screenshot of the GitHub search bar. There is a list of search suggestions by category below the search bar.

    If you click on any of the specific suggestions, you will be taken directly to the page for that suggestion (for example, the repository or project page). If you click on a recent or saved search, depending on the type of search, the search query will appear in the search bar or you will be taken to the search results page for the search term.

  3. Once you start typing a search query, you will see a list of completions and suggestions that match your query. You can click on a suggestion to jump to a specific location. As you type more qualifiers, you will see more specific suggestions, such as code files you can jump to directly.