Special terms

Wildcards

You can use the * character as a wildcard, to match words that start or end with specific characters.

For example, you could match all words that start with “sci” by using the term sci*, or match all words that finish with “ing”, by using the keyword *ing. Wildcards can also be inserted inside a word, or used to find hashtags. For example #sci* would find all hashtags starting with “#sci”. A wildcard will also match the term on its own as if it didn’t have a wildcard, so science* will match the word “science” as well as “sciences”.

You can also use wildcards to match between words. For this, you need to surround your * character with a space on each side. For example, if you wanted your feed to include posts such as “visiting Civic Theatre” but also “visiting the Court Theatre” and “visiting Basement Theatre” then you could use a wildcard term like visiting * Theatre. This would collect all of the posts named above as well as any others where different theatres were named. Note that this would also collect “visiting my aunt and going to the Theatre”.

If you need to search for a word containing the * character, you can escape it in your term by typing \* .

Use the Test Terms tool to try out different combinations of words and search terms, to get a feel for how they work.

Multiple required terms

You can use the + character to search for a group of terms appearing together, in any order.

For example, you could search for posts that contain the both the terms “canada” and “birding”. If a post only contains “canada” or only contains “birding”, then it would not be matched.

You can combine the + operator with terms that contain wildcards as well, e.g. canada + bird* would match any posts that talk about “birds”, “birding” or “a bird” as long as they also contain the term “canada”.

If you need to search for a word containing the + character, you can escape it in your term by typing \+ .

This behaviour sometimes known by the names “AND operator” or “AND searching” in other services.

Terms with exceptions

You can use the - operator with a space on either side to prevent the left most term from matching if it also matches any terms on the right hand side of the - operator.

For example, you could search for posts that contain the the term “dahlia” unless it also has the word “character”. If a post only contains “dahlia” then it would be matched, but if it also contains “character”, then it would not be matched.

You can combine the - operator with ‘wildcard’ or ‘multiple required’ terms, e.g. dahlia - char* would match all dahlia posts unless they also have words like “character”, “characters” or “charcoal”.

You can combine multiple exceptions together with multiple - operators. Each - operator signals a new term. For example, the following groups of terms are equivalent:

dahlia - character - art - #oc
dahlia - character
dahlia - art
dahlia - #oc

You can use the - operator in the exclusions area to exclude certain terms unless they also have other terms, for example we could exclude the term ‘crochet’ from our feed, except when a post also contains ‘sewing’ by typing crochet - sewing in to the feed’s exclusions.

If you need to search for a term containing the - character with spaces on either side, you can escape it by typing \- e.g. drm \- free. Terms with - characters inside a word do not need escaping, but will still work if you do e.g. drm-free and drm\-free are equivalent

This behaviour sometimes known as the NOT operator in other services.

Search Modifiers

You can include every post from a specific user, by using a search term in the format from:@handle. This might be useful if for example you were running a feed for a conference, and you wanted to search for the conference hashtag from the general public, but include all posts the official conference account. For example: from:@bsky.app

Below is a full table of all available search modifiers:

Modifier	Example	Description
from:@handle	from:@blueskyfeedcreator.com from:@fyodork.bsky.nz	Matches any post from that user, including replies
post_from:@handle	post_from:@fyodork.bsky.nz	Matches any post from that user,excluding replies
reply_to:@handle	reply_to:@bsky.app	Matches any post that was a reply to @handle’s post
quote_of:@handle	quote_of:@bsky.app	Matches any post that was a quote of @handle’s post
--	-- this is a comment	Anything after the -- sequence is ignored by the service. This might be useful if you want to include a reason for your search term.