There are couple of documents here, here and here that explain GitHub advanced search.

In GitHub you search inside:

  • Repositories
  • Topics
  • Issues and pull requests
  • Code
  • Commits
  • Users
  • Wikis

Search is not case sensitive

  • cat is the same as CAT

Based on time created or pushed

  • cat created:>2016-04-29 or
  • cat pushed:>2016-04-29
  • cat language:javascript (matches repositories with the word “cat” written in JavaScript)
  • cat -language:javascript (matches repositories with the word “cat” not written in JavaScript)
  • cat topics:>=5 (matches repositories with the word “cat” 5 or more topics)
  • label:"in progress"

Filter in

  • cat in:file (matches code where “cat” appears in the file contents)
  • cat in:path (matches code where “cat” appears in the file path)
  • cat in:file,path (matches code where “cat” appears in the file contents or the file path)
  • user:dejanbatanjac extension:txt (matches code from @dejanbatanjac that ends in .txt)

Sarching from certain organization

  • org:github extension:js (matches code from GitHub that ends in .js)

Searching based on stars

  • cat stars:>1000 (will search for repos that have >1000 stars)

File size

  • cats size:<10000 (match files smaller than 10000 Bytes)
  • filename:cat path:test language:ruby (matches Ruby files named cat within the test directory)
  • icon size:>200000 extension:css (matches files larger than 200 KB that end in .css and have the word icon)

Date

  • cat created:>2018-12-31 (search files created starting from 2019)

NOT

  • hello NOT world (matches repositories that have the word hello but not the word world)

Search in forks

  • fork:true (matches all repositories containing the word “github,” including forks)
  • cat sort:updated (matches repositories containing the word catsorted by most recently updated date)