About searching on GitHub
Use our powerful search tools to find what you're looking for among the many repositories, users, and lines of code on GitHub Enterprise.
In this article:
You can search globally across all of GitHub Enterprise, or scope your search to a particular repository or organization.
- To search globally across all of GitHub Enterprise, type what you're looking for into the search field at the top of any page. The search field on repository and organization pages is scoped to the repository or organization. To remove the repository or organization scoping and search all of GitHub Enterprise, type a backspace in the search field and delete "This repository" or "This organization".
- To search within a particular repository or organization, navigate to the repository or organization page, type what you're looking for into the search field at the top of the page, and press Enter.
Notes:
- You must be signed in to search for code across all public repositories.
- GitHub Pages sites are not searchable on GitHub Enterprise. However you can search the source content if it exists in the default branch of a repository, using code search. For more information, see "Searching code." For more information about GitHub Pages, see "What is GitHub Pages?"
After running a search on GitHub Enterprise, you can sort the results, or further refine them by clicking one of the languages in the sidebar. For more information, see "Sorting search results."
GitHub Enterprise search uses an ElasticSearch cluster to index projects every time a change is pushed to GitHub Enterprise. Issues and pull requests are indexed when they are created or modified.
Types of searches on GitHub
You can search the following types of information across all public GitHub Enterprise repositories, and all private GitHub Enterprise repositories you have access to:
Searching using a visual interface
Alternatively, you can search GitHub Enterprise using the search page (https://[hostname]/search) or advanced search page (https://[hostname]/search/advanced).
The advanced search page (https://[hostname]/search/advanced) provides a visual interface for constructing search queries. You can filter your searches by a variety of factors, such as the number of stars or number of forks a repository has. As you fill in the advanced search fields, your query will automatically be constructed in the top search bar.
