Search your media and perform basic queries.
Paul Cutler
pcutler@gnome.org

# Searching your Banshee Library

Banshee features a powerful search language. You can search your library quickly and easily with basic search terms or perform detailed searches with Banshee's advanced search terminology.

To perform a search of your media in Banshee, press the S or click the Search box in the upper right hand corner of the Library view in Banshee.

A search query consists of some basic terms, for example, dave matthews. By entering dave matthews in the search box, Banshee will search all metadata fields including Track Title, Album Title, Album Artist, Year, etc. Any track whose metadata includes dave and matthews will be returned. Search terms are case insensitive, meaning you don't have to capitalise. dave, Dave, and DAVE all mean the same thing when searching.

# Basic Operators

Operators can be placed between any two search words or placed before a search word. The default operation is AND and is used when no other operators are used between two search terms. Because it is the default, there is no explicit AND operator.

Other basic operators include OR and NOT. Together, these three operations can yield very powerful queries to help you search your media.

# Logical Operators and Examples

The following is a list of logical operators and examples of the search results when searching using them.

Operator | Description
default, white space | Search for two terms with a space between the two words or terms.
OR, or, |, , | Search results will be two songs with either result in any field.
NOT, not,- | Do not display search results with any search term that follows the operator of NOT, not, -.

Examples of logical operations include:

Query | Description
dave matthews | Matches any fields in a track containing both dave and matthews.
dave, matthews | Matches any fields in a track containing either dave or matthews.
dave or matthews | Matches any fields in a track containing either dave or matthews.
dave | matthews | Matches any fields in a track containing either dave or matthews.
-"dave matthews" | Displays all tracks whose fields do not contain dave matthews.

For more information on performing more complex search queries, see the page.