Edit:

Since theres been some confusion with dates

In 2016 github made site side searching login only and hid the search bar if you werent logged in. This didnt include searching within a repository so that could still be done, just not all repositories

This year was the change being referred to in this link which made repository level searching require logging in

Blog post: https://github.blog/changelog/2023-06-07-code-search-now-requires-login/

  • The biggest news to me is that GitHub allows users to search code. Every single time I tried to search something in GitHub, search results were next to completely useless, and always a sure-fire waste of time and effort.

    There’s hope, I guess.

      • I don’t find the search too bad but what does make it difficult is digging through a million forks of a library. Sometimes I want to find how other people used an obscure library method and I end up having to wade through endless forks with the same repeated bit of code.

        This is more a complaint of people using forking as a like button but I do wish there was an option to exclude them from search.