The Pokémon Search Bar in Pokémon Go

In Pokémon Go, a Trainer may keep hundreds and hundreds of Pokémon, depending on the size of the Pokémon Box the Trainer has. That's a lot to go through for anyone, including me. To make this task easier, the Box contains a search bar in order to be able to seek certain Pokémon quickly and efficiently. However, behind its simple interface, the search bar can be used for highly advanced and complex searches. This might prove to be useful in a variety of cases.

At its most basic, the search bar allows searching for Pokémon of a certain species name or with a certain nickname. For example, I have a Chatot nicknamed "Songbird", and by typing "so" in the search bar, it will show me that, as well as Solrock that are in my Box. Also at a basic level is searching for Pokémon based on specific types. Typing "fire" shows my Fire-type Pokémon, "flying" will show me my Flying-types, and so on and so forth. These searches are expected to be used by most everyone due to their fundamental nature.

One step up from that is searching by numbers. Typing "150" will show me the Pokémon with the Pokédex number of 150 - that is, Mewtwo. CP and HP can be searched for too; prepending "cp" and "hp" to a number accomplishes this. A range of numbers can be searched by joining two numbers with a dash (for example, "152-251" will show me Pokémon of those Pokédex numbers, all second-generation Pokémon), or just prepending or appending a dash to any number for the lower and upper limits respectively (for example, "cp -1500" will show those with CP 1500 or less, perhaps for Great League PvP).

Pokémon with specific moves, properties, or tags can also be queried. Moves are queried by prepending "@" (the "at" sign) and can be searched for name and type. The plus symbol ("+") can be used to find species families, that is, along with evolved forms. Tags like "lucky", "legendary", and "shiny" can be used in a search and will show those Pokémon accordingly. I don't have an exhaustive list, but I encourage exploration to see just what tags can be searched; some of the tags are relatively new as well and require the game to be updated.

Finally, the most advanced feature of the search bar is what in computer science is called "Boolean operators". The AND operator is the ampersand ("&"), the OR operator is the comma (","), and the NOT operator is the exclamation point ("!"). Any of the searches above may be combined with the operators for really advanced searching. For example, "cp -1000 & @tackle" will show me Pokémon with CP under 1000 having the Tackle move, "lucky, flying" will show me either Flying-type Pokémon or Lucky Pokémon (or both), and "!fire" will exclude Fire-type Pokémon. Again, I encourage exploration to see how this works out.

The capabilities of the search bar in Pokémon Go are quite sophisticated, though the search bar itself is rather simple. What's important is that it lets Trainers find specific Pokémon without having to go through what could be very many Pokémon. It may take a bit of know-how to search beyond the basics, but that know-how would be certainly useful in managing burgeoning collections of Pokémon in the game along with the plethora of characteristics associated with them.

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