Switches, operators and dates

Two switches on the search screen, two settings behind them, three operators and dates written in words.

• AI, on by default: words and meaning together, so “flight tickets” also finds the boarding pass. Off: exact words only, best for a code or an order number. It is greyed out when your plan has no search by meaning or this month’s AI requests are used up.
• Fresh, off by default: recent mail goes to the top.

Both stay as you leave them.

In Settings → Preferences → Search, under Opensolr:

• Semantic ↔ Lexical Balance: a slider in steps of 5%, from all meaning on the left to all words on the right. It starts at Semantic 70% · Lexical 30%.
• Lexical matching: Flexible, Balanced (the default) or Strict. It decides how many of your words a message must contain before it counts at all.

The chat uses the same two settings.

+ and - work on a phrase too, and then a phrase always filters. All three work together, and with Fastmail search as well. With AI on, +word is how you keep only the messages that really say it: a search for hosting invoice may also bring quotes and offers close in meaning.

Words of time keep only the mail from the days they mean, counted from today, in any of the app’s seven languages, English always included:

• today, yesterday, the day before yesterday
• 3 days ago, last week, 2 weeks ago, last month, 3 months ago, last year, a year ago
• this week, this month, this year
• the last 7 days, the past 3 months, the last 2 years
• in August, August 2025, in 2024, since 2023

For example, electricity bill last month. For an exact range, the Date range in the filters is surer.

All of this is also in the app: the ? on the search screen opens Search operators.