Search

Whenever you copy a link with Hookmark, or hook items together, Hookmark adds a bookmark to its database. So when you search in Hookmark you are effectively searching for Hookmark’s bookmarks. Here’s how to do it.

Enter and Exit Search Mode

Enter search mode with ⌘F or by clicking 🔍 icon in Hookmark’s toolbar. (You can hide/show this toolbar in Hookmark’s General preferences.)

Exit search mode

To get out of search mode, back into context mode, you can either:

Select Gear menu (⌃G) > Show Context; or
Close the Hookmark window and reopen it, because Hookmark defaults to context-sensitive mode.

Input and execute your search query

Once you’re in search mode, enter your query in the search field; Hookmark starts searching as you type. Hookmark’s search is not case-sensitive (no difference between “foo” and “Foo”).

Search syntax

Hookmark searches the text of its bookmarks (not the content to which its bookmarks refer). Most of the time, you only need to type a search expression like you do in other search engines. The rest of this section describes easy ways to narrow your search.

Alpha-numeric and Unicode characters only; and partial matching

Currently, Hookmark’s search can only match alphabetical, numeric, and unicode characters. Other characters are ignored.

Hookmark will find any bookmark that partially or completely matches your search expression. This means it will find any bookmark that contains your search expression. For example, if you search for lob, Hookmark will find any bookmark containing global, globe, or lobby.

Restricting search to particular attributes of bookmarks

In Hookmark, bookmarks contain four attributes: title, URL, path and name. The latter two (path and name) only apply to bookmarks that refer to files. By default, Hookmark searches every attribute. However, you can constrain your search to any particular attribute.

Searching only in URLs (addresses)

To restrict your search to the URLs of bookmarks, use the url: keyword as follows:

To find bookmarks with areoma in their URL field, such as areomagazine.com/author/hpluckrose, use url:areomag.
To find only emails, use url:"hook://email" because email URLs have this form: hook://email. This would also get you in the ballpark: "url:/email".
To find only sftp bookmarks, you could enter URL://sftp. (URL:sftp would find those bookmarks too but would also match URLs that contain sftp elsewhere such as hook://email/foo-sftp-bar).
To find only bookmarks to files or folders, you could enter hook://file or cast your net a bit wider with url:"file/".

Restricting search to the content of bookmark titles

Each bookmark has a title in Hookmark. Using title: as a keyword will restrict the scope of search to the titles of bookmarks.

The following will search bookmarks where their title contains imagine: title:imagine.

That search could return the following result:

* ['Couldn't have imagined it six months ago,' says Horgan, but scientists have been issuing climate warnings for decades - Vancouver Sun](https://apple.news/AIljwLpjFS7uGnMHH6LUEaw).

Restricting search to the content of name and path

Using name: as a keyword will restrict the scope of your search to the name of a file. Using path: as a keyword will restrict the scope of your search to the path of a file.

The following will search for files that have mov in their name and 2022 in their path: name:mov path:2022.

Here are some possible search results for the above:

For more information

For a full description of the search function and advanced search topics, please refer to the SQLite FT5 extension, which Hookmark’s search uses.

Using other tools to search for Hookmark’s bookmarks

Because we value interoperability, we’ve made it possible for other apps on your Mac to access Hookmark’s bookmarks. Here are some great tools:

The Fastmarks app for macOS by Tyler Hall enables you to search for bookmarks in Hookmark, Safari, iCloud tabs, Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Firefox. Fastmarks is very fast and 100% keyboard-driven. Fastmarks also supports creating bookmarks and using templates to add parameters.

You can also search Hookmark bookmarks using the Alfred and LaunchBar launchers, thanks to our Alfred workflow and LaunchBar extension.

How Hookmark’s search function differs from traditional search tools

Hookmark arguably contains the most precise search tool for macOS. That is because Hookmark only contains bookmarks to items that you have touched with Hookmark (Copy Link, Copy Markdown Link, Hook to Copied Link, Add Bookmark, hooking items together with menu bar window, or via automation).

As long as you’re in the habit of using Hookmark (for copying links bookmarking, etc.) Hookmark’s bookmark library accumulates all the gems you refer to.

Furthermore, Hookmark not only searches for files and web pages; it searches for anything it has dealt with in any app. It can bookmark emails, e-books (Apple Books, etc.), DEVONthink items, OmniFocus tasks, Things tasks, web pages (blog posts, etc.) … you name it! (No plugins or extensions required.)