Search your chats
The search box at the top of the chat sidebar finds people and groups by name across your whole inbox, and searches the text of your messages too, so you can track down the conversation where something was mentioned even when you can't remember who you said it to.
Basic Once your roster grows past a screenful, scrolling the list to find someone gets slow. The search box at the top of the conversation list finds the thread for you, either by who it’s with or by what was said in it.
Searching your conversations
Type a name into the Search box at the top of the chat sidebar. The list narrows to the conversations that match as you type. Clear the box to return to your full, most-recent-first list.
Search looks at your whole inbox, every conversation, not only the ones already loaded on screen. So a client you last spoke to months ago is found just as easily as one from this morning, without scrolling to load older threads first.
Searching what was said
Search doesn’t stop at names. It also looks inside the text of your messages, so you can find a conversation by something that was said in it.
This is for the moment you think “I know I explained the creatine timing to someone last month, but who was it?” Type the word and the matching messages come back with the client’s name attached.
Message results appear under a Messages heading, below the conversations that matched by name, with a count next to the heading. Each result shows the conversation it belongs to, who wrote it, when, and a snippet of the message with your search term highlighted.
A few things worth knowing:
- Type at least two characters. A single letter is too broad to be useful, so message results start at two.
- Both sides are searched. Your messages and your clients’ messages both match. The bold name in front of the snippet tells you who wrote it, and You: means it was you.
- Clicking a result opens that conversation, so you land in the right thread with the right person. To jump to the exact message, open the conversation and use search inside the conversation below.
What search matches
- Client names: first name, last name, or both together (typing “jordan m” finds Jordan Miles).
- Group names: the title you gave a group conversation.
- People inside groups: a group also matches when one of its members matches your search, so you’ll find the cohort a client belongs to even if the group’s name never mentions them.
- Message text: the words inside the messages themselves, in every conversation you have access to.
Search is forgiving:
- It ignores capitalisation and accents, in names and in message text alike. Searching “zoe” finds Zoé, and typing “pirinac” finds a message that says pirinač, so you never have to hunt for the right keyboard.
- It tolerates small typos and partial names, so you don’t have to spell everything exactly.
- It copes with word endings. In languages that change a word’s ending depending on the sentence, searching for the plain form still finds the others: “pirinac” also matches pirinca.
Tip: Search pairs with the All / Unread / Drafts toggle. Filter to unread first, then search within it to find one specific thread that still needs a reply. See Filter conversations.
Search inside one conversation
The sidebar search answers “which conversation was it?”. Once you’re in the right thread, there’s a second search for “where in this conversation was it?”: the magnifier icon in the conversation header. It works the same on the web dashboard and in the mobile app (for clients too, handy for finding an old voice note or instruction).
Click it and an inline search bar opens above the messages. Type a word and you get a live result counter (like “2/14”) with up and down arrows to step between matches, the way messengers like WhatsApp do:
- The up arrow (or Enter) walks backward in time to the next older match.
- The down arrow (or Shift+Enter) walks forward toward the newest match.
- Each step scrolls the thread to that message and highlights it briefly, even when the match is months deep in history: Protocol loads the older messages for you on the way. The “Load older messages” button keeps working afterwards.
- Matching is as forgiving as the sidebar search: capitalisation, accents, and word endings are all tolerated.
- Esc or the close button dismisses the bar.
Notes
- Search covers your shared team inbox the same way the list does. Owners and admins search the whole brand inbox; coaches search their own client conversations. See the shared-inbox explainer in Messaging basics.
- Looking for a file, photo or link rather than a sentence? Every conversation also has a shared-content drawer that lists its media and URLs on their own. See Browse shared media, files & links.
Related: Messaging basics → · Filter to unread →