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Searching Messages

Your chat history on Tavrn is fully searchable. Whether you’re trying to find that link someone sent you last month or tracking down a specific conversation, here’s how to use it.

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Message Search Basics

Tavrn has a built-in search that lets you search through messages in:
  • DM conversations, your private chats
  • Room channels, public messages in channels you have access to
To search:
  1. Open the chat or channel you want to search
  2. Click the search icon (🔍) in the top-right corner of the chat
  3. Type your search query
  4. Browse the results
Search results are scoped to the conversation or channel you have open. You can’t do a platform-wide search across all your DMs and rooms at once (yet).

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What You Can Search For

  • Keywords, Any word or phrase that appeared in a message
  • Links, Paste a URL fragment to find messages containing it
  • Filenames, Part of a filename to find file attachments
  • Usernames, Find messages from a specific person (search their username)

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Tips for Better Search Results

Use specific phrases

The more specific your search, the better the results. Search for "meeting at 3pm" rather than just meeting.

Try partial words

If you can’t remember the exact word, try the first few letters. Search is flexible.

Search for the file type

Looking for an audio file someone shared? Try searching for .mp3 or .wav.

Use the media gallery

For finding images and media specifically, the Media Gallery is often faster than text search.
The Media Gallery (accessible from the top of any chat window) has its own search functionality specifically for files and media. You can filter by:
  • File type (images, videos, audio)
  • Date range
  • Filename
This is particularly useful if you need to find something visual rather than something someone said.
Learn more about the Media Gallery in Sharing Files & Media.

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Pinned Messages, The Manual “Search”

For frequently referenced content, pinning a message is more efficient than searching for it every time. Pinned messages live in a dedicated panel accessible from the channel header. To pin a message:
  1. Hover over the message
  2. Click the ⋯ more options menu
  3. Select Pin Message
Only room admins and moderators can pin messages in room channels. In DMs, either person can pin messages.
All your message history is stored and searchable. There’s no cutoff date for standard users.
Cocoa members benefit from extended, unlimited message history, this mainly matters for very active rooms or long-running conversations where history might otherwise be trimmed.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Currently, search is scoped to a single conversation or channel. To search across everything, you’d need to open each conversation individually. A global search feature is something the Tavrn team has on the roadmap.
Try different keywords or more general terms. Sometimes the exact phrasing matters. If you’re sure a message exists and can’t find it, try scrolling the conversation manually, very old messages may take a moment to load.
Not directly through the message search at the moment, but you can scroll your message history to a specific time period. The Media Gallery does support date filtering for media files.
No. Once a message is deleted, it’s gone, it won’t appear in search results.