Searching
Type in the toolbar search box (⌥⌘F) and results appear as you type,
like an email client: matching pages on the left, a live preview on the right — and the
preview is directly editable, so you can fix a typo without leaving the results.
Every match is highlighted in the preview and the first one scrolls into view.
Press Return to also run the semantic “Related by meaning” pass.
The query language
| Query | Finds pages… |
|---|---|
plausible labs | containing both words, anywhere, any order |
"plausible labs" | containing that exact phrase, in order |
cats OR dogs | containing either word (OR must be uppercase) |
cats NOT dogs | containing cats but not dogs |
Pre* *ing *ish* | wildcards at either end, or both |
((Foo Bar) NOT baz) OR *pies | parentheses group anything |
A bare word matches the beginning of longer words too — mojo finds
a page named MojoPadReview — so joined WikiWord names are as findable as spaced
ones. When you need an exact word and nothing longer, quote it: "mojo".
Forgot any of this mid-search? Click the ? on the search box — the whole grammar,
including everything below, lives in a one-glance cheatsheet right where you type.
Searching by time
Add a time window to any search — alone or alongside words:
| Term | Keeps pages… |
|---|---|
during:july during:2025-q3 during:week | edited in that period (month, quarter, year, week, today, yesterday…) |
after:2026-01-15 / before:march | edited after / before a date |
created:2025 | created in the period (instead of edited) |
edited:month | says “edited” out loud — same as the default |
about:2024 about:q3 | whose content talks about that time — dates written in the page count, not just when you touched it |
So project alpha during:q3 is “my Project Alpha notes from that quarter,”
and about:march-2024 finds the meeting page that mentions March 2024 even if
you wrote it last week. Dated searches sort newest-first, like a timeline. The same time
windows work when you Ask your wiki a question — “what was I thinking about in July?”
scopes its reading to July.
Searching by field
| Term | Keeps pages… |
|---|---|
tag:client | carrying that tag |
in:research (or folder:) | filed under that folder — subfolders count |
type:pdf type:canvas type:markdown… | of that kind (pdf, epub, book, canvas, markdown, plaintext, richtext, page) |
name:budget | with the word in the page name |
sort:edited / sort:created / sort:name | — not a filter; orders the results |
Saving a search as a smart folder
Every results page has a ☆ Save button: name it, and the query becomes a
🔎 entry under Folders that re-runs live every time you click it. Because
it re-runs, time windows stay current — a saved during:week is always
this week. It's how you make views like “open questions tagged client, newest
first” without maintaining anything.
Related by meaning
Below the keyword hits, MojoPad lists pages that are semantically related to your query — found by comparing meaning, not letters, using a local embedding model. Searching for "devices that extend human memory" finds your pages about the memex and Douglas Engelbart even if none of those words match. This needs Ollama; see Local AI. Encrypted pages never appear in either list.
Inside your PDFs and books
Search reaches into your imported files, not just their names. A second or two after you import a PDF or ePub, MojoPad reads its text in the background and folds it into the index — so a word buried on page 200 of a book turns up, with a snippet, like any note. Click a PDF result and it opens right at the match, the word highlighted (see below). A scanned PDF with no real text layer can only be found by its file name — there's no text to read.
Find in page — and in a PDF
⌘F opens the in-page find bar with Replace, Replace All, next/previous, and a
running “3 of 7” match counter. Esc closes it.
Hover a PDF or book and ⌘F opens a find bar for the document instead:
type a word to jump to the first match with every hit highlighted, ⏎ / ⇧⏎ (or the
↑/↓ buttons) to step through them, Esc to close. The counter shows every occurrence in
the whole document, and it works the same in the main reader or the split pane.