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FUTO Notes

Search your notes in FUTO Notes

FUTO Notes searches every note on your device by title, folder name, tags, and body text. It runs entirely on the device, so it works offline and your queries never leave it. To look for text inside the note you have open, use find in note instead.

PlatformHow
DesktopPress Ctrl/Cmd+P, or click the search button in the sidebar. On macOS it is also under File → Search Notes….
AndroidTap the search icon in the top bar of the note list.
iOSUse the Search notes field on the top-level Notes screen. If it is hidden, pull the list down to reveal it.

Results update as you type. Each result shows the note’s title, a short preview, and the name of its folder if it is in one. Search covers every folder, not just the one you are browsing.

With the field empty, desktop shows your eight most recently modified notes, Android shows the same eight under Recent, and iOS shows the normal note list.

How matching works

Search matches whole words, with a few rules that make it forgiving while you type:

  • Every word first. A query with several words returns notes that contain all of them. Only if no note contains all of them does it fall back to notes that contain any of them.
  • The last word matches as a prefix. Aug finds a note titled August 10, 2026, so you don’t have to finish the word. Earlier words match as typed.
  • One typo is forgiven. If nothing matches exactly, search tries again allowing one wrong, missing, extra, or swapped character. This only happens when the exact search found nothing, so a correctly spelled query is never padded with near misses.
  • Case doesn’t matter. meeting and Meeting are the same query.
  • No stemming. meetings does not match meeting as a word. Typing meeting still reaches meetings through the prefix rule.
  • Words, not meaning. There is no semantic or AI search. A note that shares no words with your query won’t be found.

To find notes with a tag, search for the tag name without the #, for example recipes. Tags are indexed, so notes tagged #recipes come up, along with any note that has the word in its title or text. On desktop you can also browse tags in the sidebar; see folders and tags.

How results are ranked

Results are ranked by relevance (BM25, the standard keyword-ranking formula), with two adjustments:

  • A match in the title counts twice as much as a match in the body, so a note named after your query beats one that mentions it in passing.
  • Recently modified notes get a boost. It can at most double a note’s score and fades by half every 30 days, so it reorders close matches without letting a new but irrelevant note beat a strong one.

Keyboard and new tabs on desktop

In the search popup:

ActionKeys
Move through resultsUp / Down
Open the selected resultEnter
Close searchEscape, or click outside the popup
Open in a background tabCtrl/Cmd+click, Shift+click, or middle-click
Open in a new tab and switch to itCtrl/Cmd+Shift+click

Opening a result in a background tab keeps the popup open, so you can open several results in a row. Enter opens a result only after you have selected one with the arrow keys.

A result opens the note at the top, not at the matching text. To jump to the match, open the note and use find in note.

Where the search index is stored

The index lives in the app’s own data folder, in a directory named search, not in your notes folder. It is built from your notes on the device, it is not synced, and it is updated in the background when notes change, including changes that arrive through sync and, on desktop, edits other apps make to your notes folder. See where FUTO Notes stores your notes for the notes folder itself.

Find in note

Find in note highlights every occurrence of some text in the open note and steps through them.

  • Desktop: press Ctrl/Cmd+F. The find bar opens along the bottom of the editor. If you had text selected, it becomes the query.
  • iOS and Android: open the note’s menu (the ⋯ button on iOS, ⋮ on Android) and tap Find in note. The bar sits just above the keyboard.

The bar shows a count such as 3 of 17. To step through matches:

ActionKeys or control
Next matchEnter in the find field, the next button, or Ctrl/Cmd+G (desktop)
Previous matchShift+Enter in the find field, the previous button, or Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+G (desktop)
CloseEscape (desktop), the close button, or Back (Android)

Stepping wraps around from the last match to the first. On desktop, Ctrl/Cmd+G keeps working after you click back into the note, so you can jump to an occurrence and start typing there. You can keep editing while the bar is open, and the matches update as you type.

Find in note is simpler than search. It matches the exact text you type, ignoring case, anywhere it appears, so cat finds concatenate. There is no regex, whole-word, or match-case option, no replace, and no typo tolerance. It searches the note’s body only, not its title.

Limits

  • Search finds notes, not places within them. Use find in note to locate the match after opening it.
  • Search only covers notes on this device. Notes on your other devices appear once they have synced.

Next steps