Option to turn off search results for Books when you are not actively in that book #3962

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OVERLORD · 2026-02-05T07:58:24+03:00

OVERLORD commented

2026-02-05 07:58:24 +03:00

Originally created by @mw-christensen on GitHub (Aug 10, 2023).

Describe the feature you'd like

I would want to ability to be able to turn on or off search results for content within books depending on if you are navigating in that book or not.

We have a book with THOUSANDS of pages that only applies to a certain department in our company. If you are searching for something outside of the book then search becomes relatively worthless because the search results are populated with noise from the Book that is not needed for most employees.

What I propose is that the edit page for a book contains a single checkbox that say something like "Exclude from search results when not in this book." By default the checkbox would not be checked but if you check the box then you can exclude the search results from that book when you are in a shelf or any other book.

An alternative (or addition) to this approach would be to give priority in the search results to whatever shelf or book or chapter you are currently in (maybe this is already happening?)

Describe the benefits this would bring to existing BookStack users

The benefit for this would be that you get more accurate search results depending on where you are in Bookstack and you would not have so much search result clutter if you have thousands of pages.

Here is how I imagine this would work:

Say you have three books

Cool Places for vacation
Every city and county in the US
My Journal

Now let's suppose I am in the homepage of Bookstack and I want to find my journal entry for when I went to the Washington coast. So I do a search for "washington." In Bookstack's current state, I would get results from every city named washington (91) and every county named washington (31). This would be a lot of pages to shift through to find my journal entry for our Washington trip.

With my proposal to turn of search results when you are not in that book if I did the same search, I would only get a handful of search results to come up and it would be much easier to find.

Can the goal of this request already be achieved via other means?

Not that I am aware of. We have seriously considered deleting the contents of our Book and posting it to a different platform because it makes the search results so bad for most searches.

#3917 is the most similar feature request to this but the approach there was to exclude search results from everything based on tags. Honestly this approach could work as a workaround but the feature request is closed.

Have you searched for an existing open/closed issue?

I have searched for existing issues and none cover my fundemental request

How long have you been using BookStack?

1 to 5 years

Additional context

I just want to say how amazing Bookstack is. I have used several different wiki programs and I love Bookstack the most by far!

Originally created by @mw-christensen on GitHub (Aug 10, 2023). ### Describe the feature you'd like I would want to ability to be able to turn on or off search results for content within books depending on if you are navigating in that book or not. We have a book with THOUSANDS of pages that only applies to a certain department in our company. If you are searching for something outside of the book then search becomes relatively worthless because the search results are populated with noise from the Book that is not needed for most employees. What I propose is that the edit page for a book contains a single checkbox that say something like "Exclude from search results when not in this book." By default the checkbox would not be checked but if you check the box then you can exclude the search results from that book when you are in a shelf or any other book. An alternative (or addition) to this approach would be to give priority in the search results to whatever shelf or book or chapter you are currently in (maybe this is already happening?) ### Describe the benefits this would bring to existing BookStack users The benefit for this would be that you get more accurate search results depending on where you are in Bookstack and you would not have so much search result clutter if you have thousands of pages. Here is how I imagine this would work: Say you have three books - Cool Places for vacation - Every city and county in the US - My Journal Now let's suppose I am in the homepage of Bookstack and I want to find my journal entry for when I went to the Washington coast. So I do a search for "washington." In Bookstack's current state, I would get results from every city named washington (91) and every county named washington (31). This would be a lot of pages to shift through to find my journal entry for our Washington trip. With my proposal to turn of search results when you are not in that book if I did the same search, I would only get a handful of search results to come up and it would be much easier to find. ### Can the goal of this request already be achieved via other means? Not that I am aware of. We have seriously considered deleting the contents of our Book and posting it to a different platform because it makes the search results so bad for most searches. #3917 is the most similar feature request to this but the approach there was to exclude search results from everything based on tags. Honestly this approach could work as a workaround but the feature request is closed. ### Have you searched for an existing open/closed issue? - [X] I have searched for existing issues and none cover my fundemental request ### How long have you been using BookStack? 1 to 5 years ### Additional context I just want to say how amazing Bookstack is. I have used several different wiki programs and I love Bookstack the most by far!

OVERLORD added the 🔨 Feature Request label 2026-02-05 07:58:24 +03:00

OVERLORD commented

2026-02-05 07:58:27 +03:00

@ssddanbrown commented on GitHub (Aug 10, 2023):

Thanks for the kind words and the request.

To be honest, I really wouldn't like to add a "Exclude from search results when not in this book" option, that's really quite specific, while not being something I'd see a worth adding the complexity for based on demand. I also prefer to avoid options of branching logic like this.

If we were to add something like this, I'd prefer to do it as a higher level and have something like that requested in #1691, so you could archive/hide this particular book but those that need it could keep it favourited/bookmarked.

Alternatively, if it's very rare that users need to access that "noisy" book, you could set permissions on the book so it's only visible to those it's relevant to.

@ssddanbrown commented on GitHub (Aug 10, 2023): Thanks for the kind words and the request. To be honest, I really wouldn't like to add a "Exclude from search results when not in this book" option, that's really quite specific, while not being something I'd see a worth adding the complexity for based on demand. I also prefer to avoid options of branching logic like this. If we were to add something like this, I'd prefer to do it as a higher level and have something like that requested in #1691, so you could archive/hide this particular book but those that need it could keep it favourited/bookmarked. Alternatively, if it's very rare that users need to access that "noisy" book, you could set permissions on the book so it's only visible to those it's relevant to.

OVERLORD commented

2026-02-05 07:58:30 +03:00

@mw-christensen commented on GitHub (Aug 11, 2023):

Thanks for the response. Your suggestion to remove access to the noisy book is what we do for most employees. Unfortunately for admins (like me) all the search results still show up. The only way I know of to prevent all search results from coming up that I am aware of is to either remove myself as admin or to remove the noisy book completely.

@mw-christensen commented on GitHub (Aug 11, 2023): Thanks for the response. Your suggestion to remove access to the noisy book is what we do for most employees. Unfortunately for admins (like me) all the search results still show up. The only way I know of to prevent all search results from coming up that I am aware of is to either remove myself as admin or to remove the noisy book completely.

OVERLORD commented

2026-02-05 07:58:33 +03:00

@ssddanbrown commented on GitHub (Aug 11, 2023):

You could alternatively create a new "Admin" role (with all permissions) rename the default admin role "Super Admin", then change your roles to only have admin, not super-admin.
Custom admin roles don't ignore content permissions like the default admin role does.
Then selectively/temporarily give yourself super-admin where required.

@ssddanbrown commented on GitHub (Aug 11, 2023): You could alternatively create a new "Admin" role (with all permissions) rename the default admin role "Super Admin", then change your roles to only have admin, not super-admin. Custom admin roles don't ignore content permissions like the default admin role does. Then selectively/temporarily give yourself super-admin where required.

OVERLORD commented

2026-02-05 07:58:37 +03:00

@mw-christensen commented on GitHub (Aug 11, 2023):

Woot! I just tried what you suggested and that worked! Thanks for letting me know that custom admin roes don't ignore content permissions.

I will switch the other admins on to this new admin role now. My life is officially a little bit better now.

@mw-christensen commented on GitHub (Aug 11, 2023): Woot! I just tried what you suggested and that worked! Thanks for letting me know that custom admin roes don't ignore content permissions. I will switch the other admins on to this new admin role now. My life is officially a little bit better now.

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Reference: starred/BookStack#3962