Search in Orbb now takes about a second.
A new search engine, built around an index of your own saves, that matches both your words and what you meant.
Why it matters
Finding something should feel instant.
We wrote recently that saving got easy and finding never did. Speed is a big part of fixing that. When you type “that ramen place,” the answer should be there before the thought fades, not a few seconds later.
This week we rolled out a new search engine for Orbb. A typical search across your saves now comes back in about a second, down from five to seven. Nothing about how you search has changed. It just gets you there faster, and the results are sharper too.
Your own index
Every person gets a search index of their own.
At the heart of the new search is a private index built only from your saves. It holds the words that matter in each one: titles, captions, the text of the page, what was said in the video. When you search, Orbb goes straight to your index and gets an answer in a few milliseconds.
Because it is yours alone, it stays small and focused on the things you chose to keep, however large everyone else’s libraries grow.
Your saves, indexed for you, answering in milliseconds.
Words and meaning
It matches what you typed and what you meant.
Two kinds of search run together. One matches your words. The other matches meaning, so “cozy films for a rainy day” can find a save that never uses the word cozy. Both lists are blended into one, and saves that contain every word you typed rise to the top, because when you remember the exact words, that is almost always what you meant.
The word matching is built on Orama, an open-source search engine. Meaning search joins in for longer questions and distinctive words, and AI re-ranking is saved for the queries where it changes the order, so a quick one-word search like “gulmarg” comes back right away.
Always up to date
New saves are searchable within seconds.
Your index keeps itself current in the background, picking up new and changed saves within about fifteen seconds. Delete something and it leaves your results just as quickly.
If you haven’t searched in a while, the first search takes a moment while your index wakes up. After that, every search is fast.
One list
Your phone and your library, together.
On iPhone, results from your device and from your cloud library now arrive as a single list, with exact matches first. The thing you were picturing is usually the first thing you see.
No update needed
Already working in the app you have.
The new search runs entirely on our side, so it’s already live for everyone, including older versions of the app. It’s also built to be dependable: if your index is ever unavailable, search carries on using our standard path instead of failing.
What’s next
Ask Orbb is next.
We’re bringing the same speed to Ask Orbb, so answers about your saves start arriving sooner too. You saved it because it mattered. Getting it back should feel instant.
Get Orbb for iPhone