Search
Loupe searches the mail on your phone as you type, and then asks your mail servers for anything older. You can search with a few words, tap suggestions, or type precise searches such as f:alice and (s:invoice or b:"PO 123").
Start a search
- In a message list: pull the list down. The search field appears above the first message.
- On Mailboxes: tap the search field at the top. This searches every mailbox.
- With a keyboard: press / or Ctrl/⌘+F.
Tap Cancel, or press Esc, to leave the search.
All Mailboxes or this one
When you search from inside a mailbox, a switch at the top chooses where to look: All Mailboxes, or the mailbox you came from (shown by its name). It starts on the mailbox you came from.
Before you type: suggestions
With an empty search field, Loupe offers:
- Recent Searches, your last searches. Clear forgets them.
- Suggestions: Unread Messages, Flagged Messages, Messages with Attachments and Unreplied Messages.
- Tags: Important, Work, Personal, To Do and Later.
- People you write with.
- Smart Mailboxes you saved.
Tap one to add it to the search. You can combine several: tap Unread Messages, then a person, to find their unread mail.
As you type
- Completions appear for the word you are typing. Type
frand Loupe offersfrom:; typeis:and it offersunread,flaggedand the other states; typeafter:and it offers ranges such as “the last 7 days”. - People matching what you typed appear as “From: name”. Tap one to search for their mail.
- Colours show how Loupe reads your search: operators, quoted text and
and,orandnotare coloured. A part it can’t understand, such as an unclosed parenthesis, gets a wavy underline, and the rest of the search still runs.
Chips
When your search has more than one part, or uses an operator, each part shows as a chip above the results, in plain words: “From: alice”, “Unread”, “Before 1 Mar 2026”.
Tap a chip to change it:
- Negate turns it into its opposite, such as “Not tagged Work”. Don’t Negate turns it back.
- Remove takes it out of the search.
Chips are combined with and. To combine terms with or, type it: see Combining terms.
Results: phone first, then the server
- Results from your phone appear almost at once while you type. They come from the mail Loupe has already downloaded, including the text of messages you opened.
- Results from your mail servers follow a moment later. A line such as “Searching Work on the server…” shows each account that is still working. Messages that only the server found are marked with a small server icon.
If a server can’t be reached, Loupe says “Couldn’t search account on the server” and keeps the results it has.
You can swipe results and long-press them, as in any message list.
Note: Encrypted messages are found by their sender, recipients and subject. To find them by their text too, see Search inside encrypted mail.
Search from a message
In a conversation, you can search for mail related to a message:
- Tap a sender’s or recipient’s name, then Search Messages from name.
- Use Search from This Message in the message’s menu to search by its sender, its recipients or its subject.
Do more with a search
Above the results:
- Save as Smart Mailbox keeps the search as a mailbox on the Mailboxes screen. See Smart Mailboxes.
- The ⋯ button (Search Menu) offers Make This a Rule, which opens a new rule with your search as its condition, and Save as Smart Mailbox.
Search tips
| To find | Type |
|---|---|
| A phrase anywhere | weekend plans |
| Two words anywhere, not next to each other | weekend and plans |
| Mail from someone | from:alice or f:alice |
| Mail from a whole domain | from:@example.com |
| A subject | s:invoice |
| Text in the message | b:"tracking number" |
| Unread mail with attachments | is:unread has:attachment |
| Mail from the last week | newer_than:7d |
| Mail from March 2026 | date:2026-03 |
| Big messages | larger:5M |
| Tagged Work, not yet read | tag:work is:unread |
| Either of two senders | f:(amazon or ebay) |
| Everything except one sender | -f:newsletter |
Several words in a row are searched as one phrase. The search language reference lists every operator, with dates, sizes, tags, patterns and grouping.