Setting up site search

Material for MkDocs provides an excellent client-side search implementation, omitting the need for the integration of third-party services, which might not be compliant with privacy regulations. Moreover, search even works offline, allowing users to download your documentation.

Configuration

Built-in search plugin

The built-in search plugin integrates seamlessly with Material for MkDocs, adding multilingual client-side search with lunr and lunr-languages. It's enabled by default, but must be re-added to mkdocs.yml when other plugins are used:

plugins:
  - search

For a list of all settings, please consult the plugin documentation.

Search suggestions

When search suggestions are enabled, the search will display the likeliest completion for the last word which can be accepted with the ++arrow-right++ key. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

theme:
  features:
    - search.suggest

Searching for :octicons-search-24: search su yields ^^search suggestions^^ as a suggestion.

Search highlighting

When search highlighting is enabled and a user clicks on a search result, Material for MkDocs will highlight all occurrences after following the link. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

theme:
  features:
    - search.highlight

Searching for :octicons-search-24: code blocks highlights all occurrences of both terms.

When search sharing is activated, a :material-share-variant: share button is rendered next to the reset button, which allows to deep link to the current search query and result. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

theme:
  features:
    - search.share

When a user clicks the share button, the URL is automatically copied to the clipboard.

Usage

Search boosting

Pages can be boosted in search with the front matter search.boost property, which will make them rank higher. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:

=== ":material-arrow-up-circle: Rank up"

``` yaml
---
search:
  boost: 2 # (1)!
---

# Page title
...
```

1.  :woman_in_lotus_position: When boosting pages, be gentle and start with
    __low values__.

=== ":material-arrow-down-circle: Rank down"

``` yaml
---
search:
  boost: 0.5
---

# Page title
...
```

Search exclusion

Pages can be excluded from search with the front matter search.exclude property, removing them from the index. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:

---
search:
  exclude: true
---

# Page title
...

Excluding sections

When Attribute Lists is enabled, specific sections of pages can be excluded from search by adding the data-search-exclude pragma after a Markdown heading:

=== ":octicons-file-code-16: docs/page.md"

``` markdown
# Page title

## Section 1

The content of this section is included

## Section 2 { data-search-exclude }

The content of this section is excluded
```

=== ":octicons-codescan-16: search_index.json"

``` json
{
  ...
  "docs": [
    {
      "location":"page/",
      "text":"",
      "title":"Document title"
    },
    {
      "location":"page/#section-1",
      "text":"<p>The content of this section is included</p>",
      "title":"Section 1"
    }
  ]
}
```

Excluding blocks

When Attribute Lists is enabled, specific sections of pages can be excluded from search by adding the data-search-exclude pragma after a Markdown inline- or block-level element: