Searching

Searching

Searching for prs and issues is done by defining sections and their filters. Search filters are defined using GitHub search filters.

For example, this section, shows open PRs authored by anyone but me, which were updated in the last 2 weeks.

prsSections:
  - title: Review
    filter: >-
      is:open
      -author:@me
      updated>={{ nowModify "-2w" }}

Note: don’t specify is:pr for this setting. The dashboard always adds that filter for PR sections.

You can define any combination of search filters. To make it easier to read and maintain your filters, we recommend using the >- syntax after the filter key and writing one filter per line.

For more information about writing filters for searching GitHub, see Searching issues and pull requests.

Search Templates

In addition to GitHub’s filters, gh-dash adds templating functions.

nowModify

The nowModify function helps you calculate relative dates in the ISO-8601 format (which is what GitHub expects).

Given the date today is 2025-02-02, a search filter of updated>={{ nowModify "-1mo" }} will output updated>=2025-01-02.

A duration string is a possibly signed sequence of decimal numbers, each with optional fraction and a unit suffix, such as 1w, -8h or 1mo2w.

The available units are:

• Go’s builtin durations - ns, us (or µs), ms, s, m, h
• Additionally:
  • d/D for days
  • w/W for weeks
  • M/mo for months
  • y/Y for years

Smart Filtering

By default, if the directory you launch dash from is a clone of a remote GitHub repo (or if you have the GH_REPO environment variable set to a particular remote), then for any of your PR sections and issue sections with filters values in your configuration that don’t have an explicit repo: field, dash adds a repo:<RepoName> field to the search-bar value for them (where <RepoName> is the name of the remote repo).

That is, dash further filters those sections down to only the PRs/issues for the GitHub repo name specified in your GH_REPO environment variable — or else the repo name of the remote tracked by the clone directory from which dash launched.

For that, dash first checks and uses the repo name in the GH_REPO environment variable (if you have that set). If dash doesn’t find that, then it next checks for the value of the remote repo name tracked by the clone directory from which you launched dash — by looking through all GitHub remotes configured for that clone in the following order:

1. upstream
2. github
3. origin

…and, otherwise, if dash finds no remotes with any of those names, then it uses the repo name for the first remote in the output that git remote shows.

To disable Smart Filtering at launch, set smartFilteringAtLaunch to false in your configuration.

smartFilteringAtLaunch: false

To toggle Smart Filtering on or off for the current section you’re currently viewing, either use the t key — or else use whatever custom keybinding you have set for the togglesearch builtin in the keybindings section of your configuration.