Everyday use
Searching
Ask for what you want in plain English — "family with birthdays coming up", "dinners with family last month" — and Longtime turns it into filters you can see and adjust.
The People and Connections pages each have a search box at the top that takes ordinary sentences. Type what you are looking for, search, and Longtime works out the filters for you.
Searching in plain English
On People, try things like:
- "family with birthdays coming up"
- "everyone in Book club or Neighbors"
- "people named Sam"
- "my holiday cards Pool" (a saved search — see Keeping a search, below)
On Connections:
- "dinners with family last month"
- "calls with Priya this year"
- "get-togethers with five or more people"
- "what's coming up with the Book club"
The search does not look anything up; it turns your sentence into filters, and shows them as chips under the box — one for each part, such as "Family". Remove a chip to drop that part, or clear them all to start over. A new search replaces the filters you had.
If it gets it wrong
Say it a little differently, or remove the chip that is off. If the search itself fails it says so and leaves your filters as they were; if it finds nothing in your sentence to filter on, you will see the full list.
Quick filters
The arrow beside the search box opens a few ready-made filters.
On People: upcoming birthdays, upcoming connections, recent birthdays and recent connections.
On Connections: past connections and future connections.
Circles: in all, or in any
When a search picks two or more circles on People, a toggle chooses whether someone has to be in all of them or in any of them.
Sorting and views on People
People can be sorted by most recently connected (the default), first name, last name, age, upcoming birthday, who is due to reconnect soonest, or most recently added, in either direction.
Use the grid and list icons to choose between cards and a list. Longtime remembers your choice on that device.
Occasions in the Connections list
On Connections, a toggle chooses how occasions are drawn: all of them, with occasions framed around their connections; only the occasions; or no occasions, with the connections on their own. A search matches occasions too.
Keeping a search
A search on People that you come back to — "everyone in Family" — can be saved as a Pool, which stays up to date as people change. See Pools.
What happens to what you type
Search uses AI to turn your sentence into filters. What you type never trains anyone's models, and the companies that build the models never see it. Your sentence is sent with the names of your circles (and, on People, your Pools) so it can match them, and on Connections with today's date and your Space's timezone, so "last month" means what you meant. Your people and their details are not sent, and Longtime does not keep your sentence. The details are in the AI notice.
Details
On People, search understands names, circles, Pools and the quick filters. On Connections it understands people, circles, dates, words in a connection's title or place, how many people were there, and what kind of connection it was: "calls" are voice and video calls, "texts" are texts, and a dinner, a coffee or a visit means meeting in person. The kinds show as one chip — "Voice call or Video call".
A date shows as a chip such as "Started on/after 2026-10-01".
On Connections, when a name matches more than one person — you know two Priyas — the chip reads "Priya Shah or Priya Raman", and anything with either of them matches. It cannot search by how long it has been since you saw someone — the dashboard's Reconnect panel covers that.
A search matches occasions by their title, place, people and days. The occasions toggle stays as you left it when you search again — unless your sentence asks for occasions, or for none.
Plain-English search has a fair-use limit per Space. Search very fast and it asks you to wait a few seconds; the daily limit resets within 24 hours. Quick filters, sorting and chips do not count against it.