GH-SEARCH-ISSUES(1)

💅 GH-SEARCH-ISSUES — like, the whole manual, bestie

okay so this is gh-search-issues, straight out of the GitHub CLI manual (yes, THE GitHub CLI manual, we're fancy now 🎀). Let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

gh-search-issues — search for issues 🔍💖

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

gh search issues [<query>] [flags]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So you wanna search for issues on GitHub. Iconic. Here's the tea: this command can build your query three different ways — using the GitHub search syntax, using the parameter/qualifier flags, or a mix of both. No cap, whatever vibes you want. 💅

GitHub's search syntax is documented riiiight here:

⟨https://docs.github.com/search-github/searching-on-github/searching-issues-and-pull-requests⟩

Now, on supported GitHub hosts, you can flex harder and use advanced issue search syntax inside the --search query. But listen — advanced syntax stuff like boolean operators OR/AND and parentheses for nesting must be passed as separate arguments, not crammed inside a quoted multi-word string. Also, heads up: this syntax is not supported with --web. More deets on advanced issue search:

⟨https://docs.github.com/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/using-issues/filtering-and-searching-issues-and-pull-requests#building-advanced-filters-for-issues⟩

Then there's --search-type, which lets you pick semantic or hybrid (keyword + semantic) ranking instead of the default lexical search. Slay. But bestie, listen to the fine print: semantic and hybrid search are scoped to issues, they're relevance-ranked (so --sort and --order literally cannot be used, sorry), they return a single page of results, and they are not available on GitHub Enterprise Server. 😭

And if your search query has a hyphen in it and you're confused about handling it, just run gh search --help. That's it, that's the tip. 🫶

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⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

• --app <string> — filter by GitHub App author
• --archived — filter based on the repository archived state {true|false}
• --assignee <string> — filter by assignee
• --author <string> — filter by author (and hey, use --app if you're filtering by a GitHub App)
• --closed <date> — filter on closed at date
• --commenter <user> — filter based on comments by user
• --comments <number> — filter on number of comments
• --created <date> — filter based on created at date
• --include-prs — include pull requests in results
• --interactions <number> — filter on number of reactions and comments
• --involves <user> — filter based on involvement of user
• -q, --jq <expression> — filter JSON output using a jq expression
• --json <fields> — output JSON with the specified fields
• --label <strings> — filter on label
• --language <string> — filter based on the coding language
• -L, --limit <int> (default 30) — maximum number of results to fetch
• --locked — filter on locked conversation status
• --match <strings> — restrict search to a specific field of the issue: {title|body|comments}
• --mentions <user> — filter based on user mentions
• --milestone <title> — filter by milestone title
• --no-assignee — filter on missing assignee
• --no-label — filter on missing label
• --no-milestone — filter on missing milestone
• --no-project — filter on missing project
• --order <string> (default "desc") — order of results returned, ignored unless the --sort flag is specified: {asc|desc}
• --owner <strings> — filter on repository owner
• --project <owner/number> — filter on project board owner/number
• --reactions <number> — filter on number of reactions
• -R, --repo <OWNER/REPO> — filter on repository, in OWNER/REPO format
• --search-type <string> (default "lexical") — type of issue search to perform: {lexical|semantic|hybrid}
• --sort <string> (default "best-match") — sort fetched results: {comments|created|interactions|reactions|reactions-+1|reactions--1|reactions-heart|reactions-smile|reactions-tada|reactions-thinking_face|updated}
• --state <string> — filter based on state: {open|closed}
• --team-mentions <string> — filter based on team mentions
• -t, --template <string> — format JSON output using a Go template; see gh help formatting
• --updated <date> — filter on last updated at date
• --visibility <strings> — filter based on repository visibility: {public|private|internal}
• -w, --web — open the search query in the web browser

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🎀 JSON FIELDS 🎀

here's the full roster of fields you can ask for, bestie — every single one:

assignees, author, authorAssociation, body, closedAt, commentsCount, createdAt, id, isLocked, isPullRequest, labels, number, repository, state, title, updatedAt, url

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🌈 EXIT CODES 🌈

• 0: successful execution ✨
• 1: error 😭
• 2: command canceled 🙈
• 4: authentication required 🔐

NOTE: specific commands may have additional exit codes. Refer to the command's help for more information. iykyk 💅

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🔥 EXAMPLE 🔥

# Search issues matching set of keywords "readme" and "typo"
$ gh search issues readme typo

# Search issues matching phrase "broken feature"
$ gh search issues "broken feature"

# Search issues using raw search qualifiers as separate arguments
$ gh search issues label:bug author:monalisa state:open

# Search issues and pull requests in cli organization
$ gh search issues --include-prs --owner=cli

# Search open issues assigned to yourself
$ gh search issues --assignee=@me --state=open

# Search issues with numerous comments
$ gh search issues --comments=">100"

# Search issues without label "bug"
$ gh search issues -- -label:bug

# Search issues only from un-archived repositories (default is all repositories)
$ gh search issues --owner github --archived=false

# Search issues using semantic (natural-language) ranking
$ gh search issues "feature broken on web" --search-type semantic

# Search issues using hybrid (keyword + semantic) ranking
$ gh search issues "feature broken" --search-type hybrid

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🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

gh-search(1) — go read that one too, bestie 💖

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and that's the whole page!! this was generated from GitHub CLI v2.102.0, dated Oct 2026 — slay, go search some issues, you're gonna do amazing 🦋👑💜