However big your library gets, what you're looking for stays one keystroke away. Press ⌘O in the main Nodes window to open search. Before you type anything, search lists what you've opened most recently - notes and tags together.
Nodes searches in two complementary ways.
Full-text search
The fast, literal one: type a word or phrase and Nodes scans your note titles and the words inside your markdown. It's near-instant, and it's exact - perfect for when you remember a specific term you used. (Type at least a few characters to search inside note bodies, not just titles.)
Semantic search
The thoughtful one: Nodes also understands your notes by meaning. Using the on-device descriptions it writes for your notes, it can surface results that are about what you asked, even when they don't share the same words.
So a search for "remembering things" can turn up your note on spaced repetition - no exact match required. It even works across languages - ask in German and it can still find the English note.
Tags and filters
Search finds more than notes. Your tags turn up too - open one to jump straight to its page. The chips under the field let you narrow to just notes or just tags, or to a single kind of note: text, PDF, or image.
Want to look inside a tag? Highlight it and press Tab - it joins the filter row as a chip, and you only see notes that carry it. Add another the same way to narrow further: a note has to carry every tag you've applied, and with nothing typed you see all of them. Click a chip to take it off, or press Delete in the empty field to drop the last one. Arrow keys move through results, Return opens the highlighted one, and Esc closes search.
Spotlight, Shortcuts and Siri
Your notes show up in Spotlight too. Press ⌘Space, type part of a note's title, its text or one of its tags, and click the result to open it in Nodes. Spotlight's index stays on your Mac. To keep your notes out of it, turn off Show notes in Spotlight in Settings ▸ General.
Siri and the Shortcuts app can create a note or open one by name - in Shortcuts, Create Node can fill in the title, text and tags. Search in Nodes opens this search with your words already typed in (macOS 14.2 or later).
Searching well
- Start with a distinctive word; narrow only if you need to.
- Name your notes clearly when you create them - good titles make every search better.
- Can't recall the exact wording? Describe the idea and let semantic search do the work.
Between the two, you rarely have to remember where something is. You just ask for it.