Skip to main content

Searching for repositories

You can search for repositories on GitHub Enterprise Cloud and narrow the results using these repository search qualifiers in any combination.

You can search for repositories globally across all of GitHub, or search for repositories within a particular organization. For more information, see "About searching on GitHub."

To include forks in the search results, you will need to add fork:true or fork:only to your query. For more information, see "Searching in forks."

Tips:

  • For a list of search syntaxes that you can add to any search qualifier to further improve your results, see "Understanding the search syntax".
  • Use quotations around multi-word search terms. For example, if you want to search for issues with the label "In progress," you'd search for label:"in progress". Search is not case sensitive.

Search by repository name, description, or contents of the README file

With the in qualifier you can restrict your search to the repository name, repository description, repository topics, contents of the README file, or any combination of these. When you omit this qualifier, only the repository name, description, and topics are searched.

QualifierExample
in:namejquery in:name matches repositories with "jquery" in the repository name.
in:descriptionjquery in:name,description matches repositories with "jquery" in the repository name or description.
in:topicsjquery in:topics matches repositories labeled with "jquery" as a topic.
in:readmejquery in:readme matches repositories mentioning "jquery" in the repository's README file.
repo:owner/namerepo:octocat/hello-world matches a specific repository name.

Search based on the contents of a repository

You can find a repository by searching for content in the repository's README file using the in:readme qualifier. For more information, see "About READMEs."

Besides using in:readme, it's not possible to find repositories by searching for specific content within the repository. To search for a specific file or content within a repository, you can use the file finder or code-specific search qualifiers. For more information, see "Finding files on GitHub" and "Understanding GitHub Code Search syntax."

QualifierExample
in:readmeoctocat in:readme matches repositories mentioning "octocat" in the repository's README file.

Search within a user's or organization's repositories

To search in all repositories owned by a certain user or organization, you can use the user or org qualifier.

QualifierExample
user:USERNAMEuser:defunkt forks:>100 matches repositories from @defunkt that have more than 100 forks.
org:ORGNAMEorg:github matches repositories from GitHub.

Search by repository size

The size qualifier finds repositories that match a certain size (in kilobytes), using greater than, less than, and range qualifiers. For more information, see "Understanding the search syntax."

QualifierExample
size:nsize:1000 matches repositories that are 1 MB exactly.
size:>nsize:>=30000 matches repositories that are at least 30 MB.
size:<nsize:<50 matches repositories that are smaller than 50 KB.
size:n..nsize:50..120 matches repositories that are between 50 KB and 120 KB.

Search by number of followers

You can filter repositories based on the number of users who follow the repositories, using the followers qualifier with greater than, less than, and range qualifiers. For more information, see "Understanding the search syntax."

QualifierExample
followers:>=nnode followers:>=10000 matches repositories with 10,000 or more followers mentioning the word "node".
followers:n..nstyleguide linter followers:1..10 matches repositories with between 1 and 10 followers, mentioning the word "styleguide linter."

Search by number of forks

The forks qualifier specifies the number of forks a repository should have, using greater than, less than, and range qualifiers. For more information, see "Understanding the search syntax."

QualifierExample
forks:nforks:5 matches repositories with only five forks.
forks:>nforks:>=205 matches repositories with at least 205 forks.
forks:<nforks:<90 matches repositories with fewer than 90 forks.
forks:n..nforks:10..20 matches repositories with 10 to 20 forks.

Search by number of stars

You can search repositories based on the number of stars the repositories have, using greater than, less than, and range qualifiers. For more information, see "Saving repositories with stars" and "Understanding the search syntax."

QualifierExample
stars:nstars:500 matches repositories with exactly 500 stars.
stars:n..n size:<nstars:10..20 size:<1000 matches repositories 10 to 20 stars, that are smaller than 1000 KB.
stars:>=n fork:true language:LANGUAGEstars:>=500 fork:true language:php matches repositories with the at least 500 stars, including forked ones, that are written in PHP.

Search by when a repository was created or last updated

You can filter repositories based on time of creation or time of last update. For repository creation, you can use the created qualifier; to find out when a repository was last updated, you'll want to use the pushed qualifier. The pushed qualifier will return a list of repositories, sorted by the most recent commit made on any branch in the repository.

Both take a date as a parameter. Date formatting must follow the ISO8601 standard, which is YYYY-MM-DD (year-month-day). You can also add optional time information THH:MM:SS+00:00 after the date, to search by the hour, minute, and second. That's T, followed by HH:MM:SS (hour-minutes-seconds), and a UTC offset (+00:00).

When you search for a date, you can use greater than, less than, and range qualifiers to further filter results. For more information, see "Understanding the search syntax."

QualifierExample
created:<YYYY-MM-DDwebos created:<2011-01-01 matches repositories with the word "webos" that were created before 2011.
pushed:>YYYY-MM-DDcss pushed:>2013-02-01 matches repositories with the word "css" that were pushed to after January 2013.
pushed:>=YYYY-MM-DD fork:onlycase pushed:>=2013-03-06 fork:only matches repositories with the word "case" that were pushed to on or after March 6th, 2013, and that are forks.

Search by language

You can search repositories based on the language of the code in the repositories.

QualifierExample
language:LANGUAGErails language:javascript matches repositories with the word "rails" that are written in JavaScript.

Search by topic

You can find all of the repositories that are classified with a particular topic. For more information, see "Classifying your repository with topics."

QualifierExample
topic:TOPICtopic:jekyll matches repositories that have been classified with the topic "Jekyll."

Search by number of topics

You can search repositories by the number of topics that have been applied to the repositories, using the topics qualifier along with greater than, less than, and range qualifiers. For more information, see "Classifying your repository with topics" and "Understanding the search syntax."

QualifierExample
topics:ntopics:5 matches repositories that have five topics.
topics:>ntopics:>3 matches repositories that have more than three topics.

Search by license

You can search repositories by the type of license in the repositories. You must use a license keyword to filter repositories by a particular license or license family. For more information, see "Licensing a repository."

QualifierExample
license:LICENSE_KEYWORDlicense:apache-2.0 matches repositories that are licensed under Apache License 2.0.

Search by repository visibility

You can filter your search based on the visibility of the repositories. For more information, see "About repositories."

QualifierExample
is:publicis:public org:github matches public repositories owned by GitHub.
is:internalis:internal test matches internal repositories that you can access and contain the word "test".
is:privateis:private pages matches private repositories that you can access and contain the word "pages."

Search based on repository custom property

You can filter repositories based on custom properties using the props. prefixed qualifiers. For more information, see "Managing custom properties for repositories in your organization."

For these qualifiers to work, the search must be limited to a single organization. Otherwise, props. qualifiers are ignored.

QualifierExample
props.PROPERTY:VALUEorg:github props.environment:production matches repositories from the github organization that have the custom property environment set to production.

Search based on whether a repository is a mirror

You can search repositories based on whether the repositories are mirrors and hosted elsewhere. For more information, see "Finding ways to contribute to open source on GitHub."

QualifierExample
mirror:truemirror:true GNOME matches repositories that are mirrors and contain the word "GNOME."
mirror:falsemirror:false GNOME matches repositories that are not mirrors and contain the word "GNOME."

Search based on whether a repository is a template

You can search repositories based on whether the repositories are templates. For more information, see "Creating a template repository".

QualifierExample
template:truetemplate:true GNOME matches repositories that are templates and contain the word "GNOME".
template:falsetemplate:false GNOME matches repositories that are not templates and contain the word "GNOME".

Search based on whether a repository is archived

You can search repositories based on whether or not the repositories are archived. For more information, see "Archiving repositories."

QualifierExample
archived:truearchived:true GNOME matches repositories that are archived and contain the word "GNOME."
archived:falsearchived:false GNOME matches repositories that are not archived and contain the word "GNOME."

Search based on number of issues with good first issue or help wanted labels

You can search for repositories that have a minimum number of issues labeled help-wanted or good-first-issue with the qualifiers help-wanted-issues:>n and good-first-issues:>n. For more information, see "Encouraging helpful contributions to your project with labels."

QualifierExample
good-first-issues:>ngood-first-issues:>2 javascript matches repositories with more than two issues labeled good-first-issue and that contain the word "javascript."
help-wanted-issues:>nhelp-wanted-issues:>4 react matches repositories with more than four issues labeled help-wanted and that contain the word "React."

Search based on ability to sponsor

You can search for repositories whose owners can be sponsored on GitHub Sponsors with the is:sponsorable qualifier. For more information, see "About GitHub Sponsors."

You can search for repositories that have a funding file using the has:funding-file qualifier. For more information, see "Displaying a sponsor button in your repository."

QualifierExample
is:sponsorableis:sponsorable matches repositories whose owners have a GitHub Sponsors profile.
has:funding-filehas:funding-file matches repositories that have a FUNDING.yml file.

Further reading