Local Find / Search within Canvas

Use case or problem

When canvas grows large, it can be difficult for eyes to directly catch the desired content. It would be great to add a search within the canvas.

Proposed solution

A floating search bar to search the title and content of notes and cards within the canvas. When hit enter, select the note/card, center it to the screen, with the searched word highlighted.

If possible, also make the content of web page searchable. But if it is techinically different, we can also put it into a new FR.

Related feature requests

The discussion in this link also talks about this idea. But since one feature per post, I want to separate the within-canvas search FR from global search FR.

41 Likes

Good idea, I just added “Local” and “Find” into your title for clarity, and so it also shows up if people use the search term “Find”.

4 Likes

I was just about to suggest the same thing.

My use case: I mark certain nodes on my canvases as organizer nodes (eg principles, skills, models). I’d like to be able to search and cycle through the organizer nodes as a means to navigate the canvas.

2 Likes

This has been partially implemented with the “Jump to Group” feature. I agree that being able to search for cards (not just groups) within a canvas would be incredibly helpful.

2 Likes

Absolutely essential. I keep hitting CTRL-F and coming up empty

6 Likes

I’m also really feeling the need for this - I’m creating a big map with lots of notes and cards, and it’s becoming a big problem that I can’t search to find where something sits in the canvas.

3 Likes

Finding items in a canvas is crucial. I have stopped using canvas without the ability to find things in it.

8 Likes

Absolutely true!

3 Likes

Please consider this! I would really benefit from it.

3 Likes

My new plugin should cover this, check it on community plugins Plugins - Obsidian

13 Likes

Yo!! I have been lurking in the Obsidian forums since time immemorial, but for the first time ever I felt the all-consuming need to create an account, JUST to tell you how grateful I am that you made this plugin!!

CanvaSearch is exactly the thing I needed. I was actually considering not using Canvas for serious brainstorming simply because of the lack of a search feature, and now you good sir have saved my workflow :')

Also I don’t wanna sound greedy, but do you have any plans to add to the plugin’s features in the future? I would personally love an exact search option, or the option to index notes so that searching through note contents won’t take as long. But anyway – like I said, THANK YOU for creating this life-saving, workflow-saving, ideation-saving, world-saving tool.

1 Like

Thank you this is exactly what I needed

1 Like

+1 here. Really want to have this feature ASAP. I am wondering to request this feature too.

Also just tried out your plug-in, and it’s AWESOME!
Thank you so much, I now feel a lot more comfortable letting my mind-maps sprawl into oblivion :sparkling_heart:

Much-needed, for sure!

thank you so much, you absolute life-saver! ahaha

+1, absolutely necessary

Just made an account just to say thank you. Plugins like these save obsidian for me. Keep being amazing.

Really helpful. Thanks a lot. Though I think obsidian should make this as default feature.