Searching

Atlas's search finds documents and canvas items across your entire project — start typing and results narrow instantly. Tags and metadata fields are created and managed on Metadata and Tags; this page covers how to find things with them.

Opening Search

The Search/Open Document dialog in Atlas

On macOS, click the search icon in the toolbar, choose File > Open Document…, or press Cmd+O to open Quick Open — a floating panel that searches your entire project as you type. On iOS and iPadOS, tap the search bar at the top of the Organizer to open the same search experience full-screen; with a hardware keyboard attached, Cmd+O opens it directly too.

When search opens empty, your most recently edited documents appear for quick access.

What You Can Search

Atlas searches across document titles, body content, synopses, and notes all at once, along with the text on your canvases. A matching pin, card, or label appears as a result, and choosing it jumps straight to that item on its canvas — see The Canvas for more on canvas items.

Query Tokens

For more targeted searches, add query tokens to narrow results beyond plain text:

Token	What it does
Text scope	Limit the search to all content or titles only
Has synopsis	Show only documents that have a synopsis filled in
Has notes	Show only documents that have notes
By tag	Filter to documents with one or more specific tags
By metadata field	Filter to documents that have a value set for a specific project field
Item type	Filter to a specific canvas item type, like Pin or Label

Tokens of different types combine with AND logic — so filtering by a tag and "has synopsis" returns only documents that match both. Multiple tokens of the same type combine with OR logic — filtering by two tags returns documents with either tag.

Tip

Query tokens and text search work together. You can type a search term and add a tag filter to find, say, every document tagged "Character" that mentions "the forest."

Opening a Result

Select a result to open it. Hold Shift while clicking or pressing Return (or Shift+Return on iOS) to open it in a new window instead — on iPad this opens a separate window if your multitasking setup supports it; on iPhone, which doesn't support multiple windows, it opens in place as normal.

Searching from Tags

Tap or click a tag in the Inspector, or in a project's tag cloud on the Project Overview, to open search already filtered to that tag — no need to build the filter yourself.

Adding a Document to a Canvas

The same search opens when you tap the squared-plus button on a canvas to add a document reference card (see Document Cards) — narrowed to documents, but with the same tag and metadata filtering available.

Searching with Metadata

Project metadata fields appear alongside tags in the search token picker. Start typing a field's name and it surfaces as an attribute in the dropdown. Adding a metadata token filters results to documents that have any value set for that field.

For Selection fields, the token stays drillable — tap or click it to choose a specific option and narrow results further (for example, filtering to just documents where "Status" is "Draft").

Metadata values are also folded into Spotlight keywords, so plain text search finds documents by their field values without an explicit token. Typing a value like "Draft" or a character's name will surface any document with a matching metadata value.

For a full overview of how metadata fields are defined and assigned, see Metadata and Tags.

Spotlight Integration

Atlas indexes your documents for system-wide Spotlight search, so you can find your writing without even opening the app. Indexed content includes document titles, body text, synopses, notes, tags, and metadata field values. Individual canvas items — pins, cards, and labels — are indexed too, and opening one from Spotlight deep-links straight to it on its canvas. Results display the document's icon and project name for context.

Use Cmd+Space on Mac or pull down on the Home Screen on iPad/iPhone to search for Atlas documents from anywhere on your device.