Saved Searches, search and filters in Omnivore web

Learn how to search and filter and how to use Saved Searches in Omnivore web.

Omnivore offers a variety of ways to search and filter your saved content. You can also customize your Saved Searches menu to create shortcuts to the most used searches. This combination makes it easy to create simple ways to quickly get to whatever you’re looking for. 

In this article, we will discuss filtering based on file types, dates, sorting options, and read state. This article focuses on the Omnivore web client, and the team is working on improving the features for the mobile and desktop apps.

By default, the Saved Searches menu comes with the following defined sections:

• Inbox

• Continue Reading

• Non-Feed Items

• Highlights

• Unlabelled

• Oldest First

• Files

• Archived

• and in the edit menu, Edit Saved Searches.

Let’s discuss every one of these and see how you can expand your sorting options. For each saved search we will show the filters used, so you can use them as inspiration for your own searches.

Inbox - the Inbox has all your saved content from your account that has not been archived. This includes RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, saved links, and files.

The filter used internally is in:inbox

Continue Reading - this section collects the content you have started reading but have not yet completed. Omnivore tracks your reading across devices and generates a progress bar of your reading for each item.

The filter is: in:inbox sort:read-desc is:unread

Non-Feed Items - Here you can find all of your saved items excluding feeds, subscriptions, and files.

The filter is: in:library

Highlights - All highlights and their corresponding documents are shown here. When this filter is opened, the notebook view will appear, offering the option to make notes on highlights or add your thoughts about it.

The filter is: has:highlights mode:highlights

Unlabelled - Any saved content that doesn’t have a label (tag) will be sorted here. A saved link can have a label for two reasons: If it’s a feed, in which case the appropriate tag Newsletter or RSS will be automatically added, or if a label has been added by the user.

The filter is: no:label

Oldest First - Under this saved search, items are ordered based on their saved date, oldest first. Changing the sort to `saved-desc` will show items sorted by newest first.

The filter is: sort:saved-asc

Files - Any PDFs added to Ommnivore will be here.

The filter is: type:file

Archived - After you read something you can archive it and keep it forever. You can find all archived items here.

The filter is: in:archive

Default saved searches for Subscriptions

Wondering where your RSS feeds and newsletters disappear to? Well, they have a dedicated section, called Subscriptions. Here you can find three predefined options: 

• All - (all newsletters and RSS feeds; the filter is: in:subscription)

• Feeds - (only RSS feeds; the filter is: label:RSS)

• Newsletters - (only newsletters, based on the filter: label:newsletter).

You can edit subscriptions, both RSS feeds and newsletters, with the Edit Subscription button.

Edit your saved searches

Now that you know which searches are already set up in Omnivore, let’s explore how you can edit your saved searches.

There are a few editing possibilities for saved searches via the Edit Saved Searches menu. You can add new searches, edit their names, and change their order in the left sidebar.

Keep in mind that for the default saved searches, you cannot delete them or edit the name, but they can be deselected, so they will not appear in the sidebar.

You can create a new saved search in the Edit Saved Searches menu, using the filter of one of the default saved searches. For example, let’s say that you want to change the name of the Non-Feed Items search. First, create a new saved search. Let’s name it Links, with the search filter in:library. This will create a search for all links saved, in a dedicated section called Links. Now you can deselect the Non-Feed Items search so that you will not have duplicate searches in the sidebar.

Expand your saved searches

If you want to expand your saved searches, here are a few ideas to get you started.

The Inbox filter will show all unarchived items, and Library will show all saved items, except subscriptions. (RSS and newsletters). If you want to see all items, regardless of their archived status, use the filter in:all.

If you use labels, you can search for one label or a mix of them. For example, label:books will show all items with the books label. If you want to find newsletters that are related to books, you can use: label:Newsletter label:books. You can also negate searches using a minus sign, for example, -label:RSS will return only things that do not have the RSS label(For those of you used to Boolean searches, currently all searches use AND, but there are plans to implement true Boolean eventually). 

The October 11, 2023 update brings three new powerful filters:

• is:reading will return items that you have partially read.

• wordsCount:<=1000 this will return articles with less than 1001 words.

• wordsCount:>=1000 articles with more than 1000 words.

With the last two filters, you can now create saved searches like "Short Reads" or "Long Reads”. And of course, you can combine these with any other searches. So, for example, if you wanted to quickly clear out some shorter RSS feeds to catch up, you could create the filter label:RSS wordsCount:<=1000. 

There are several other search options available not covered in this article that you can read about in our docs. The search capabilities in Omnivore can allow you to easily create very specific filters to make it easy to find just what you want and to help avoid being overwhelmed by narrowing your focus. 

Let us know in the comments if you’ve come up with any particularly useful saved searches.