# Sift plugin for Obsidian Sift is an [[Obsidian]] community plugin by Dario Giovanoli (disasta-g), and the most capable new search plugin of 2026. It ranks results, does substring matching, tolerates umlauts, indexes canvas card text, and works on mobile. Its main trick is substring matching (technically, trigram search). The [[Search core plugin for Obsidian|core Search]] and [[Omnisearch plugin for Obsidian|Omnisearch]] match words or word beginnings, so a search for `maschine` misses `Espressomaschine` because the word starts with "Espresso". Sift matches any part of a word. It also handles umlauts and the German ß (`kueche` finds `Küche`). For German and other compound-word languages, it's a real upgrade over core search. The syntax: - space for AND, `"phrase"`, `-word`, `a OR b` - fields like `path:`, `tag:`, `title:`, `prop:status` and `prop:status=open` - `-word*` excludes every word that starts with "word", and `-prop:status` excludes notes that have a `status` property at all Example: `tag:meeting prop:status=open budget -cancelled` finds your open meeting notes that mention the budget, without the cancelled ones. How to use it: - Run `Sift: Open search` or click its ribbon icon. It ships without a default hotkey, so assign one - Chips filter by folder (with or without subfolders), by property, and by created or modified date, with quick picks for today, 7 days, 30 days and the year - Three switches narrow the scope: "This note" (search only the current note), "Notes only" (no attachments) and "Open todos" (only notes that still have unchecked tasks) - To triage a result list, `Ctrl+Shift+K` keeps a result and `Ctrl+Shift+X` dismisses it. "Open all" then opens what's left It also indexes the names of the views in your `.base` files, so a search can land on a Base. It makes no network calls. It's the most promising newcomer for full-text search, and one I recommend. It's new and not manually reviewed by Obsidian staff yet, so test it on a copy of your vault first. ## References - Source code: https://github.com/disasta-g/sift - Community plugin page: https://obsidian.md/plugins?id=sift ## Related - [[The Complete Guide to Obsidian Search - Find Any Note When You Need It (Article)]] - [[The Best Obsidian Plugins for Finding Notes (Article)]] - [[Search core plugin for Obsidian]] - [[Omnisearch plugin for Obsidian]] - [[Obsidian Bases]] - [[Simple CanvaSearch plugin for Obsidian]] - [[VaultDex plugin for Obsidian]]