If you’ve ever struggled to find a specific design, folder, or image in your Canva account, this tutorial will walk you through how to use Canva’s updated search feature to get what you need.
Whether you’re still setting up your Canva organization system or simply need a better way to manage an overflowing account, you’ll learn how to search in Canva more efficiently, without all the scrolling.
Resources Mentioned
- Free Trial of Canva Pro (Affiliate Link)
Transcript
Trying to track down a specific design, folder, or image in Canva can feel overwhelming, especially if you’ve got a lot of content in your account.
Canva’s search feature has been around for a while, but it now has a refreshed interface that makes it even easier to find your own designs, folders, and uploads. This update is part of the changes announced during Canva Create 2025, and if you don’t have it in your account yet, it should be rolling out to you soon.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through how to use the updated search to quickly locate your content, along with tips for narrowing your results using Canva’s built-in filters.
Where to Search in Canva
On the Canva homepage, there’s now a section at the top that says “What will you design today?” and just below that, you’ll see three options:
- One for searching your own content, including your designs, folders, and uploads
- One for exploring Canva’s template library
- And one for using Canva’s AI-powered tools, like DreamLab and Canva Code.
For now, we’re going to focus on how to search your own content.
How to Search Your Own Canva Designs and Files
Click into the search bar under the “Your Content” tab and you’ll be prompted to search your designs, folders, and uploads from within your own Canva account.
This can be a really helpful way to locate content, whether you’ve set up a folder system or not. Now, I do recommend setting up a custom folder structure because I’ve seen how much it helps Canva users stay organized. It’s a key part of what I teach.
But I also know that for some people, a folder-based approach just isn’t intuitive, so if you’ve tried it and it doesn’t work for you, that’s totally valid too.
You can use keyword search as an alternative, or even as your main method, in order to find what you need.
Let’s walk through an example using one of my own folders. I have a page on my website called the “Everything Page,” which is a summary of all my freebies, courses, and services, and I’ve created a folder in Canva to keep everything related to that page organized.
To find that folder quickly, I might try typing “everything page” into the search bar. But because “page” is a pretty common word, that search could bring up a lot of unrelated results. So in this case, I’d simplify the search to just the word “everything,” which is more likely to bring up the content I’m looking for.
Once the results appear, I can scroll through and spot the folder I want, or I can use the filters to narrow down my search results even faster.
How to Use Filters to Narrow Your Canva Search
At the bottom of the search bar area, you’ll see four filter options:
- Type
- Category
- Owner
- Date Modified
These filters make it much easier to narrow down your results and avoid scrolling through everything Canva thinks might be relevant.
If I only want to see folders, I can choose “Folders” under the Type filter, and everything else will disappear. If I want to find a design I worked on recently, I can filter by Date Modified and select something like “Last 30 days.” I can also choose to see only content I’ve created by using the Owner filter.
If no results show up after applying several filters, it usually means there’s nothing in your account that matches all of those conditions. You can try removing a filter or using a slightly different search term to get better results.
How to Search for Images in Canva
You can also use the same search bar to find images you’ve uploaded to your account.
Let’s say I want to find one of the cover images I created recently for my free Canva Starter Guide series. I’ll type the word “cover” into the search bar, then use the Type filter to select “Images,” and adjust the Date Modified filter to show results from the last 30 days. That gives me a focused list of my most recent relevant uploads, making it much quicker to find the exact image I’m looking for.
You can use the same approach with your own keywords and filters to track down the images you need.
How to Search from the Projects Page in Canva
You can also search from the Projects tab.
When you type in your keyword there, the filters won’t appear immediately, but once the results load, you’ll see a similar set of filtering options, and you can narrow things down just like you would on the homepage.
How to Search for Your Content Inside the Canva Design Editor
Finally, you can also search from inside a design, which can be really helpful if you’re in the middle of a project and need to quickly locate something you’ve already uploaded or created.
With your design open, click on the Projects tab in the left-hand object panel. At the top of the panel, you’ll see a field labelled “Search your content.”
Let’s say I’m looking for an image I know lives in one of my styled stock folders. If I know the folder is called “Notebooks & Office Supplies,” I can type in the word “notebooks” and press Return or Enter on my keyboard.
By default, Canva will show all results, including designs, images, folders, and more, but across the top, you’ll see tabs that let you narrow things down.
If I click on the Folders tab, I’ll see the specific folder I was looking for, and then I can open that folder and select the image I want to use in my design, all without needing to leave the editor.
Search or Browse: Do What Works for Your Brain
While I definitely recommend building a custom folder system to stay organized, I also know there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Some people rely heavily on folders, others prefer to search, and many do a bit of both.
The important thing is figuring out what works for your brain. and giving yourself permission to organize in a way that feels intuitive.
Whether you’re sorting through folders or typing keywords into the search bar, either option can be effective. And if you’re ready to create a more structured system, I’ve got resources to help with that too.
Hopefully, this has helped you to see how you can make the most of Canva’s updated search feature and make it much easier to find what you need, when you need it.
