A library is only as good as your way back into it. This morning we fixed something in Heart Photos that got in the way of exactly that, and it is a good moment to show how searching works from start to finish.
What changed today
Until this morning, the words you typed narrowed only the page you were looking at, while the page count at the top still counted your whole wall. Search for "spotlight", press Next page, and page 2 could come up empty, because it was the wall's next two hundred images with none of them matching.
Now the search is asked of the whole library. The count is the search's count and every page is full of what you asked for. Try heart.photos/?q=spotlight: today it reads "Page 1 of 2", and page 2 is spotlight images all the way down.
Type a few words
The search box sits at the top of every wall. Type, and the wall narrows as you go; a moment after you stop, Heart Photos asks for every match in the library.
How it matches:
- Every word has to be there. Adding a word narrows the search, so "castle sea" finds images with both.
- Anywhere in the name or a tag. A word can match inside a longer one: "art" finds "gocart" too. The name is the image's own, or He.art's title for it when it has none.
- You can see why it matched. The letters that matched are lit in the caption under each image, so nothing turns up without a reason you can read.
- Not the description. The longer paragraph He.art writes about an image is left out on purpose, so a result never arrives with nothing on it to explain why.
Galleries turn up too
If a gallery's name holds every word you typed, it appears as a pill above the images. Search for dubai and the Dubai gallery sits right there with its count; press it to go in. Your own galleries come first, then everyone's published ones.
Narrow it with tags
The bar of tags across the top works alongside the words. Its buttons on the right decide what pressing a tag does:
- One: only that tag.
- And: narrow to this tag as well.
- Or: start an alternative, this tag or that one.
- Not: keep this tag out of everything shown.
The tags you choose appear as chips inside the search box, next to anything you typed. Press the "and" or "or" between two chips to flip it, press a chip's word to exclude it, or its x to take it off. Backspace in an empty box removes the last one. No tags shows the images nobody has tagged yet.
Share it, or start over
What you search for is kept in the address, so you can reload the page, bookmark it, or send the link to someone and they will see the same results. Press Esc (or the x in the box) to clear the words and the chips together and get your whole wall back.
Try it
Open Heart Photos, type the first word you remember about an image you have been meaning to find, and page through everything it turns up. And if you are new here, He.art is where the same account asks questions, writes docs and makes images.