Lenses
A lens is a saved bundle of ranking rules, plus optional defaults such as region, language, time range, or file type, that you switch on for a search. It is a mode for one kind of searching: programming, academic, recipes, the small web, and so on.
Lens modes
Every lens has a mode that decides how its sites are used:
- Boost — the lens's sites are raised, but everything else still appears. Use it for "I prefer these sources."
- Restrict — results are limited to the lens's sites (an allow-list). Use it for "only these sources."
- Filter — the lens carries no sites, only a search constraint (for example, PDFs only).
Built-in lenses
Neuji ships a curated set every account can use at once:
| Lens | Mode | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Small Web | Boost | Favors indie sites, personal blogs, and human-scale search (marginalia, wiby, neocities, bear blog…). |
| Forums & Discussion | Restrict | Limits to community sites (Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Exchange, Lobsters, Lemmy…). |
| Programming | Boost | Favors docs and code (Stack Overflow, MDN, GitHub, language/runtime docs, Microsoft Learn…). |
| Academic | Restrict | Limits to scholarly sources (arXiv, PubMed, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, Springer, Nature, SSRN…). |
| PDFs | Filter | Restricts to PDF documents. |
| News | Boost | Favors major newswires and outlets (Reuters, AP, BBC, NPR, The Guardian, Al Jazeera). |
| Recipes | Restrict | Limits to trusted recipe sites (Serious Eats, Bon Appétit, Smitten Kitchen, Budget Bytes…). |
Activating a lens
Four interchangeable ways:
- Lens picker — choose a lens from the dropdown beside the search box (it stays on for that search).
- Bang — type
!<slug>in the query, e.g.!programming async iterator. - URL — append
?lens=<slug>to a results URL, e.g./search?q=async+iterator&lens=programming. - Default — set a lens as your default in Settings → Search Control, and it applies to every search until you change it.
!recipes weeknight pasta
!academic protein foldingCustom lenses
Create your own lens in Settings → Search Control: name it (the slug is derived from the name), choose a mode, optionally set a default region / language / time range / file type, and add the ranking rules it carries. Built-in lens domains are added as raise rules internally, so a Boost lens nudges those sites up while a Restrict lens limits results to them.
Lenses and your other rules
An active lens layers below any one-shot bang rule but composes with your personal rules, so a personal block still applies while a lens is on. See Domain ranking for how overlapping rules are resolved.