Searching for repositories

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."

• This article contains links to example searches on the GitHub.com website, but you can use the same search filters with GitHub Enterprise Server. In the linked example searches, replace github.com with the hostname for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.

• 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.

Qualifier	Example
in:name	jquery in:name matches repositories with "jquery" in the repository name.
in:description	jquery in:name,description matches repositories with "jquery" in the repository name or description.
in:topics	jquery in:topics matches repositories labeled with "jquery" as a topic.
in:readme	jquery in:readme matches repositories mentioning "jquery" in the repository's README file.
repo:owner/name	repo: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 "Searching code."

Qualifier	Example
in:readme	octocat 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.

Qualifier	Example
user:USERNAME	user:defunkt forks:>100 matches repositories from @defunkt that have more than 100 forks.
org:ORGNAME	org: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."

Qualifier	Example
size:n	size:1000 matches repositories that are 1 MB exactly.
size:>n	size:>=30000 matches repositories that are at least 30 MB.
size:<n	size:<50 matches repositories that are smaller than 50 KB.
size:n..n	size: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."

Qualifier	Example
followers:>=n	node followers:>=10000 matches repositories with 10,000 or more followers mentioning the word "node".
followers:n..n	styleguide 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."

Qualifier	Example
forks:n	forks:5 matches repositories with only five forks.
forks:>n	forks:>=205 matches repositories with at least 205 forks.
forks:<n	forks:<90 matches repositories with fewer than 90 forks.
forks:n..n	forks: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."

Qualifier	Example
stars:n	stars:500 matches repositories with exactly 500 stars.
stars:n..n size:<n	stars:10..20 size:<1000 matches repositories 10 to 20 stars, that are smaller than 1000 KB.
stars:>=n fork:true language:LANGUAGE	stars:>=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."

Qualifier	Example
created:<YYYY-MM-DD	webos created:<2011-01-01 matches repositories with the word "webos" that were created before 2011.
pushed:>YYYY-MM-DD	css pushed:>2013-02-01 matches repositories with the word "css" that were pushed to after January 2013.
pushed:>=YYYY-MM-DD fork:only	case 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.

Qualifier	Example
language:LANGUAGE	rails 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."

Qualifier	Example
topic:TOPIC	topic: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."

Qualifier	Example
topics:n	topics:5 matches repositories that have five topics.
topics:>n	topics:>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."

Qualifier	Example
license:LICENSE_KEYWORD	license: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."

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

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".

Qualifier	Example
template:true	template:true GNOME matches repositories that are templates and contain the word "GNOME".
template:false	template: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."

Qualifier	Example
archived:true	archived:true GNOME matches repositories that are archived and contain the word "GNOME."
archived:false	archived:false GNOME matches repositories that are not archived and contain the word "GNOME."

Further reading

• "Sorting search results"
• "Searching in forks"