Omni Search

Liferay DXP 2026.Q4+ Release Feature

Omni Search finds applications, settings, and content from one search box. Once an administrator enables the feature flag, click the search button beside the Global Menu at the top right of the page, or press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on macOS).

The button appears only while you’re signed in and viewing a page, not editing or previewing it. Results show only what you have permission to see. In the Liferay CMS, the button is in the CMS toolbar instead.

Enabling Omni Search

Omni Search is off by default. A user with the Administrator role enables it separately in each virtual instance with a release feature flag. If you don’t see the Omni Search button, ask your administrator to enable it.

Open the Global Menu () and navigate to Control Panel → Instance Settings.
Click Feature Flags under Platform, then click Release.
Toggle Omni Search (LPD-78171) to enable it. The toggle’s label changes to Enabled. After you reload the page, a search button appears at the top right, beside the Global Menu.

If you manage a self-hosted or PaaS server, you can instead set feature.flag.LPD-78171=true in portal-ext.properties and restart the server.

Searching for Applications, Settings, and Content

Omni Search searches as you type, so there’s nothing to submit.

Click Omni Search () at the top right of the page, beside the Global Menu, or press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on macOS) anywhere on the page. The button’s tooltip shows the shortcut. The Omni Search window opens with the cursor in an empty search box.
Type what you’re looking for. Results appear in sections (see Result Sections). For example, typing organ lists the Users and Organizations application in the Applications Menu section, with the breadcrumb Control Panel › Users beneath its name.
Press the Up or Down Arrow key to move through the results, and press Enter to open the highlighted result. Alternatively, click a result. What opens depends on the result’s section (see Result Sections).

To close the window without opening a result, press Escape or click outside it.

Result Sections

Results appear in up to five sections, in this order. A section that finds nothing doesn’t appear, and each section shows at most eight results. Each result shows an icon, a title, and a line of secondary text. Omni Search sorts the System Settings and Instance Settings results by name.

Applications Menu: This section lists applications from the Global Menu’s Applications, Commerce, and Control Panel menus that you have permission to see. Each result’s secondary text is the application’s menu category, preceded by its parent category when there is one (for example, Control Panel › Users). Opening a result opens the application.
Site Administration: This section lists applications from the current site’s Site Menu that you have permission to see. The secondary text takes the same form as in the Applications Menu section, and opening a result opens the application.
System Settings: This section lists configurations from System Settings. It appears only if you have the Administrator role in the default virtual instance, the instance created when Liferay DXP was installed. If your server limits System Settings to specific users, only those users see this section. Each result’s secondary text is its configuration category, and opening a result opens the configuration in System Settings.
Instance Settings: This section lists configurations from Instance Settings. It appears only if you have the Administrator role in the current virtual instance. Each result’s secondary text is its configuration category, and opening a result opens the configuration in Instance Settings.
Results: This section lists pages and content from every site in the instance that you have permission to view, under a heading that shows the total number of matches (for example, “Results (37)”). Each result’s secondary text is “Page - [Site Name]” for a page and the item’s type for anything else. Opening a page result opens the page. Opening anything else opens the item’s editor if you can edit it, and otherwise opens the page where the item appears.

An application or setting matches only when its name contains your search text as one unbroken phrase. Case doesn’t matter. For example, group user doesn’t find User Groups, and a misspelled name finds nothing.

Recent Searches

When the search box is empty, a Recent Searches section shows your last five searches, newest first. Omni Search saves a search only when you open one of its results. It keeps a separate list for you in each browser. If you decline functional cookies, Omni Search stops saving searches and hides the list until you accept them again.

Click a recent search to put it back in the search box. To delete one, hover over it and click Remove (). With the keyboard, highlight the search with the arrow keys, press Tab to move to its Remove button, and press Enter.