Search operators and filters

Find any email by sender, recipient, content, or person, across one inbox or all of them.

Press / from anywhere in Slashy to open search. Results stream as you type. Use j and k to move between hits and Enter to open the thread.

One inbox or all inboxes

Search scope is the most common source of confusion, so it is worth being explicit.

• If you are inside one connected account, search returns matches from that inbox only.
• Switch to the unified All Inboxes view first if you want to search across every connected account at once.
• The current scope is shown next to the search field so you always know what you are searching.

Cross-participant people search

Typing a person’s name finds threads where they were the sender, a recipient, or on CC. You do not need to remember which direction the conversation went. Domain and prefix matches work too, so acme.com returns every thread that touched anyone at Acme.

Very short queries (two characters or fewer) match on full name fields only, not on partial substrings. This stops jo from pulling in every “join” and “John” in your archive.

Operators

People

Operator	Example	Finds
from:	from:[e-mail]	Threads where this person sent a message
to:	to:[e-mail]	Threads addressed to this recipient
cc:	cc:[e-mail]	Threads where this address was on CC

Partial matches work: to:acme matches anyone at acme.com.

Content

Operator	Example	Finds
subject:	subject:quarterly	Word in the subject line
(free text)	budget proposal	Words anywhere in subject or body
"quoted"	"action items"	Exact phrase match

State

Operator	Finds
is:unread	Unread threads
is:starred	Starred threads
is:important	Threads in the Important label
has:attachment	Messages with at least one attachment
label:	Threads carrying a specific label
in:	A specific location: in:inbox, in:sent, in:trash, in:spam, in:drafts
in:anywhere	Every location at once, including trash and spam

Date

Operator	Example
before:	before:2026-05-01
after:	after:2026-04-01

Combine for a range: after:2026-01-01 before:2026-02-01.

Combining operators

Terms are joined with AND by default. Use OR for either condition and - to exclude.

from:sarah budget                              implicit AND
from:sarah OR from:mike                        either sender
from:sarah -subject:newsletter                 exclude newsletters
(from:sarah OR from:mike) is:unread            grouped logic

Keyboard navigation

Action	Shortcut
Open search	/
Next result	j
Previous result	k
Open the highlighted thread	Enter
Close search	Esc

For natural language, open the command palette with Cmd+K and type a sentence like “unread emails from investors about term sheets.” The palette translates it into a search query for you.

Keyboard shortcuts

The full reference for navigating Slashy.

Inbox views

Filtered views you can scope search inside.

Batch processing

Multi-select results to archive or label in one pass.

Contacts

Pivot from any thread to the contact profile.

Command palette

Natural language search and actions with Cmd+K.