'Search' functionality doesn't work well

Hi

I’m trying to perform search of one of the words in movies name, but it doesn’t find it.

Searching for the first word always successful.

Tried *crayon* or “crayon”, but it never find the full name unless I write the first word in name.

Why?

What am I missing?

Is this about media from your local / a shared server or are you searching a movie via Plex’s Discover feature?
Have you enabled that respective source in the search preferences?

I’m searching local / shared, not Discover (I hate it, think it’s annoying).

What you present in the picture just doesn’t work for me.

Media Library is marked.

Would you mind sharing some additional details?
e.g. what version of PMS are you using and do you get the same result on different clients or just a specific one (which)?

Version 1.42.2.10156

But just to clarify - searching never worked as you show in picture (year+).

I tried on my PC and laptop, different users - all same results.

This used to happen to me also and the topic arose on the forums. It was definitely odd how it was limited to the first word. You could probably find the old topic after some digging. I vaguely recall a Plex employee responding.

But it works now (searching for strange) in both the search box TomH pictured and in Advanced Filters → Title → contains. I tried the hosted web app and Plex for Mac. It’d be interesting if we could narrow down what you’re encountering even though you have up to date apps.

When you used your PC and laptop to test, describe what players you ran. Maybe it was Chrome on both for example?

I use Brave browser in PC and laptop.

I didn’t find any ‘Advanced Filter’.

I tried searching for some movies I share with my kids - can’t find them using search unless I write the first word.

I use the search box at top.

image

It’s also weird there is no option for internal search in Settings, trying to figure whether it’s setup or configuration issue.

I’ll experiment with Brave and Opera to see if there’s any difference between those and the Safari I tested.

To get to Advanced Filters if you’re curious, you would

  1. click your Movies library in the left sidebar
  2. click your Library tab at the top center of the Movies window.
  3. click the All dropdown and scroll to the very bottom
  4. where you find Advanced Filters.

Screenshot 2025-10-04 at 2.10.29 PM

By internal search I’m guessing you mean a substring search as versus an exact match. What your topic describes is you’re stuck on exact matching which would explain why you’re required to type the first word, but I seem to default to a substring search.

I’m not familiar with another configuration for exact match vs substring in Settings, but I can say that for sure there’s that option in Advanced Filters. It’s labeled is versus contains.

I take that back, are you using the agent named Plex Movie? I may be required for searching substrings of movie titles.

Ok.

Still - nothing.

And it exist.

Does that only happen for you with terms followed by punctuation?
I’ve noticed you’re dealing with an „other video“ type library and did some testing with those on my own setup. Still working fine for me (though, I didn’t have any items with the search term immediately followed by a dot).

Does this issue persist for you after optimizing your server’s database (settings > [server name] > troubleshooting)?

Yes. Tried the Optimize from Troubleshooting - no change

I’m unable to replicate your search issue on Brave. I’m getting the expected contains sort of substring search results, even with an Other Videos type of library on this Mac.

I’ll try to get around to testing on Win 11, though.

Have you checked your database for corruption?

I downloaded the files but it seems they are built for linux infrastructure, and I run server on Win 11 platform.

Tried running the PS file, without success.

Am I missing something?

Could be any of several reasons. Please screenshot the error you get. Then we could ask the author. Some thoughts …

  • Chuck provides directions in a Windows-Readme for DBRepair
  • MS removed Powershell 2.0 in August from Win11 24H2
  • You may need to install Powershell 7
  • You may need to override some Windows security features as explained in the Readme.

I tried the bat file (one shot) using CMD with admin rights, here’s the error I got:

image

It looks like you copied the entire web page, not just the script. You can find the raw script here: raw.githubusercontent.com/ChuckPa/DBRepair/refs/heads/master/Windows/DBRepair-Windows.bat, or use the “Download raw file” button when viewing the file:

Closed server and tried running the script - finished successfully.

Ran server again, tried searching ‘crayon’ - the movie still doesn’t show.

It does give me some results - but none related to the phrase, and it’s not showing in files names or in title (due to privacy matters I won’t upload picture of the result)

Hi

So, as I understand, no one encounter it.

Does anyone know how do I contact the developers?

It’s nice they have a forum, but no real solutions for customers’ issues.

Hi. Unfortunately, there is no alternate way to directly contact developers other than through these forums. While they lurk and respond here, it can be overwhelming for them to monitor each conversation for a direct plea for help (if they even can in some cases). Most of the time, they only chime in if there is no further help forthcoming from power users such as you have gotten so far, and even then only if they notice the post.

If they do not hop in within a day, I’d try a shameful (shameless?) poke to try to gain attention.