Android
3.0.8
Search is very slow and returns unrelated results.
A specific reproducible example is title:cat which returns many notes which don't have "cat" anywhere in their title.
The best workaround I found so far is to always add double quotes e.g. "cat" which is much faster and gives much more relevant results.
Can you provide some examples (and possibly screenshots) of such notes? I don't really use search on Android, but I've just done some basic testing right now, and title:<term> doesn't seem to return unrelated notes for me here. Testing with Joplin v3.1.2.
Here is the screenshot of an example:
The results are actually identical to "All notes".
The search takes quite a bit of time (I have 10k notes) and the results evolve over several stages (one actually showing correct results) but the final result is the screenshot.
In Configuration => Tools, there's a button "Rebuild search index". Could you try pressing this to see if it makes a difference?
There was a time when the search index could get corrupted on mobile, although normally it shouldn't happen anymore but that would still be worth a try.
Also do you have any error in the log? joplinapp.org/debugging
I tried "fix search index" on my android. Looking at "FTS" keyword in the logs I could see the rebuild completed in 10 minutes and inserted 14k items, deleted 0. However the issue persists.
I will keep looking into logs and try sharing them here.
I looked at errors in the logs and did not find any one related to search.
I don't feel comfortable sharing full logs because I can see sensitive info in them (full name, personal email and joplin cloud inbox email).
Issue persists. I don't know what else to try.
That's very strange. I can say that for me title:something works as expected, but in your case the results are clearly unrelated.
Maybe it's down to the Android version and associated SQLite version. If you go in Configuration => More info. Does it say if FTS is enabled? (it's at the bottom of that screen)
Here is the version info.
Joplin 3.0.8 (prod, android)
Client ID: 13e(...)
Sync Version: 3
Profile Version: 47
Keychain Supported: No
Automatic Backlinks to note: 3.0.3
Embed Search: 2.0.0
Inline tags: 1.3.0
Joplin debug tool: 0.2.0
Quick Links: 1.3.2
Android API level: 30
WebView version: 127.0.6533.103
WebView package: com.google.android.webview
FTS enabled: 1
Hermes enabled: 1
I don't see any issue in there. Just to be sure, could you try disabling all plugins to see if it makes a difference? That would be unlikely that a plugin would interfere with search but worth a try anyway
I disabled plugin support and the issue persists. I deleted all plugins, killed and restarted the app and the issue persists (title:cat search eventually returns unrelated notes).
I was all along using my main device (Boox Tab Ultra).
Interestingly the issue doesn't happen on a similar secondary device (Boox Note 3) with similar configuration and plugins. title:cat returns correct results there.
I could not find a difference which would explain the two behaviors. Any idea welcomed.
Going to bed now, will read your answers tomorrow.
On the problematic device, when I switch to a different profile with only the 5 default "Welcome" notes, search works correctly.
A few months ago I enabled OCR for a while but eventually disabled it weeks ago. Not sure if related.
Documentation says a special custom search mode is automatically enabled when Chinese characters are detected. I do have such characters in some of my 10k notes. But that would not explain why there is no bug on my secondary device with the same dataset.
I have been playing with various searches on my problematic device.
Interestingly, title:pro returns unrelated results (notes without any pro in title) but a few of the notes have title keyword occurrences highlighted in their body.
Why would a title:pro search highlight the title keyword in note bodies?
Maybe the "search as you type" form is to blame, it somehow mixes results of title and title:pro? title:pro results show up quite fast then asynchronously much later the results of title are injected and eventually mess up the final results?
When I type title:cat extremely slowly (several seconds between letters) the bug no longer happens!
This is definitely a bug about the "search as you type" feature which struggles on large datasets. Instead of showing you only the results of the final search title:cat, it somehow mixes in results of partial t, ti, title searches imho instead of cancelling them and ignoring their results.
I wish there was an option to disable search as you type and start the search only when I hit a magnifying glass button or something like that.
Other users with large datasets would agree I guess.
Another suggestion: add the beginning and ending of each search attempt in the logs, together with the full search string e.g. title:cat. It would make understanding what's happening with the search much easier.
I just saw that this issue was opened. Thanks! "search as you type" broken on mobile · Issue #11032 · laurent22/joplin · GitHub
I agree and have the same issue on mobile! Random, unrelated notes pop up during the search, even with a delay, which often causes me to select the appearing right search results, only to get redirected to an unrelated note because the search list gets updated during the selection.
On desktop, a related issue was just fixed (1)
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