Search
Search is one field over everything the app can show. Tap the magnifier in the top-left corner of any of the five tabs and type what you are looking for — tides, dogs, UV, parking, rip current, size limit — and a ranked list comes back as you type. Every result is somewhere the app can already take you: a section on a screen (search switches tab, pushes the screen and scrolls to it), a whole screen, an explainer (the ⓘ notes, opened right there as a sheet), or a payload item — a fish, a species, an almanac window, a rocket launch or an upstream source. Search matches on hand-written synonyms as well as titles, so dog finds Rules on the beach and shark tracker finds the section that says the app does not have one. It works from a saved copy while a refresh is still running and when the network is down (on the very first launch there is no tab bar, and so no magnifier, until the first payload arrives). It is not on the web page.
How to open it
Section titled “How to open it”| From | How |
|---|---|
| Any tab | The magnifier in the top-left corner of Today, Water, Events, Nature and Info |
| Siri | ”Search Sunset Beach” or “Find something in Sunset Beach” — Siri asks “What are you looking for?” and opens the sheet with your answer typed in |
| Shortcuts app | The Search the Beach action, with a Search for parameter |
| A link | sunsetbeach://search?q=uv opens the sheet with uv already in it; sunsetbeach://search opens it empty |
The sheet is titled Search; the field’s placeholder reads “Tides, dogs, UV, parking…”. On iOS 18 and later the keyboard comes up by itself when the sheet opens empty; on iOS 17 you tap the field first. Done closes it. Search is a sheet rather than a sixth tab, so it opens over whatever tab you are on and returns you there.
What is searchable
Section titled “What is searchable”Everything below is in the index. The first three groups are built into the app and do not depend on the payload; the rest come from the current payload.
| Kind (as shown on the result) | What | Count | Where a tap goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section | Every catalogued section header in the app, from Right now on Today to Before you keep one on Fishing | 53 | Switches to the tab, pushes the screen if the section is on a pushed one, and scrolls straight to that section |
| Screen | Every screen worth finding by name: the five tabs, Nature map, When to go, The year, This week, Sightings, Birds, Migration radar, Fishing, Sources, Alerts | 15 | Opens the screen |
| Explainer | The ⓘ notes, matched on their whole text — so 500 yards finds Right whales and December to March finds Yesterday’s catch | 26 | Opens the note as a sheet over the results; your query is kept |
| Fish | Every species on the Fishing screen, by common name, other name or scientific name, and the text of its season, bait and note | From the payload | Nature › Fishing › that fish |
| Species | Every animal in What you might see, by common or scientific name | From the payload | Nature › that species |
| Window | Every almanac window in the next seven days, e.g. Ghost crabs, with the day and start time as its subtitle | From the payload | Nature › When to go › that window |
| Launch | Every launch on the schedule, by name, provider, rocket, mission, orbit or pad | From the payload | Events › that launch |
| Source | Every upstream on the Sources screen, by name or detail | From the payload | Info › Sources › that source |
Terms for things the app does not have are indexed on purpose and point at the screen that says so: shark tracker, ocearch, satellite, iss, space station and wave height at this beach all resolve to What this doesn’t know on the Sources screen.
Each result row shows the title, a subtitle when there is one, and a caption that says the kind and where it lives — Section · Water, Fish · Nature › Fishing, Source · Beach info › Sources, or just Explainer or Screen. Results filed under Alerts open the Alerts sheet.
How results are ranked
Section titled “How results are ranked”Matching is case- and accent-insensitive, and a query only matches at the start of a word — uv matches UV index but not survey or curve. Each result gets one score, highest first:
| Match | Rank |
|---|---|
| The title is exactly the query | 1 |
| The title starts with the query | 2 |
| A synonym is exactly the query | 3 |
| A word in the title starts with the query | 4 |
| A synonym starts with the query, or contains a word that does | 5 |
| A word in the body (an explainer’s text, a fish’s bait line, a source’s detail) starts with the query | 6 |
For dog, Rules on the beach wins because dog is one of its exact synonyms; an explainer whose text merely mentions dogs ranks below it.
Ties break by kind — section, fish, species, window, launch, source, explainer, screen — so a section beats the explainer about it and a screen comes last; then alphabetically by title. At most 8 results per kind are shown, so forty matching launches cannot bury the one section you wanted. The list re-ranks on every keystroke and is flat — not grouped by tab — so the best answer is always the first row.
The synonyms are hand-written and deliberately not fuzzy: a wrong guess on a screen about beach rules is worse than no hit. Some examples that work:
| You type | You get |
|---|---|
| high tide, tide table, when is low tide | Highs & lows (Water) |
| rip current, undertow, is it rough | Surf zone forecast (Water) |
| uv, sunscreen, how hot, air quality | Air & sun (Today) |
| swim advisory, bacteria, is it safe to swim | Water quality (Today) |
| dog, leash, fine, alcohol, tents | Rules on the beach (Beach info) |
| how much is parking, hourly | Rates (Beach info) |
| restroom, wifi, showers | Where this comes from (Beach info) — the section that lists what the town doesn’t publish |
| size limit, bag limit, can i keep it | Before you keep one (Nature › Fishing) |
| lights out, hatching, loggerhead | Sea turtles (Nature) |
| storm surge, flooding, springmaid | Against the prediction (Water) |
| push notifications, sunset alert | When conditions change (Alerts) |
| fireworks, market, concert | Events (screen) |
What you see when there is nothing to show
Section titled “What you see when there is nothing to show”- Before you type: “Search the beach — Every section, every screen and every explainer in the app — including the ones that say what this app doesn’t know.”
- No match: “Nothing for “your query"" with the line “Sources lists every upstream, and what this app doesn’t know.” and an Open Sources button, which takes you to the Sources screen under Beach info.
Search, Siri, Shortcuts and iOS Spotlight
Section titled “Search, Siri, Shortcuts and iOS Spotlight”The app’s search index is used in three places, and it is worth knowing which is which:
- In the app — the sheet described on this page.
- Siri and the Shortcuts app — every searchable section and screen (except the four Alerts sections, which all open the one Alerts sheet that is itself a place) is also a place that Siri and Shortcuts can open, and typing into the Shortcuts picker’s field runs the same synonym-aware ranking: uv offers Air & sun, size limit offers Before you keep one. Ten Siri phrases are built in (each accepts two wordings), including the one that opens search. See Siri, Spotlight and Shortcuts for the full list.
- iOS Spotlight shows the app’s Siri shortcuts as tiles (for example Search), and tapping one opens the app. Spotlight does not search the app’s sections, explainers or data itself — the app does not publish its index to system search. Type your question in the app’s own search sheet, or say “Search Sunset Beach”.
Search does not read tide times or numbers: tide at 3pm is a question, not a search, and it will match the tide sections rather than answer.