Searching

Type what you remember. Search works with Fastmail alone; with an Opensolr account it also finds your mail by what it means.

Which one the app uses is chosen in Settings → Preferences → Search, under Search in.

• Opensolr: words and meaning, the AI answer, filters, grouping and the text inside attachments and pictures, from your own Opensolr Index. It needs an Opensolr account, see signing in; without one, the search screen offers the sign-in.
• Fastmail: a classic search by words, newest first, on Fastmail’s own servers, with nothing else to connect. The +word, -word and “phrase” operators work the same; there are no switches, filters, groups or AI answer.

With Opensolr chosen and the index out of disk space or bandwidth, or not reachable, the search runs on Fastmail on its own and says why under the search box. Pull down to try the index again.

Under the search box, one row of tools, each with its own page:

• Group and Filters: narrow and sort the results. See Filters and groups.
• AI and Fresh: words and meaning, recent mail first. See Switches, operators and dates.
• Instructions for the AI answer, and the answer itself above the results. See The AI answer.
• Select all results: move or delete every result at once. See Every result at once.
• ?: the search operators and the dates in words.

People and conversations are suggested as you type: Suggestions as you type. Words inside PDFs, documents and pictures are found too: Text inside attachments.

To ask your mail a question in your own words, use the Chat button next to Search: Chat with your mail.