I wish that ao3 had an option to filter warnings (and tbh certain authors) out like I will never ever want to read it and just seeing it puts me off so much that often I end up closing my browser because that content upsets me so much lmao
There is a way to do this but I canât recall how to do it. itâs something you type into the box for âother filtersâ or something, I donât remember. who knows?? Itâs not a great option, and I donât know if you can sort out authors that way, but itâs better than nothing if someone can reblog this with how to do it!
Alrighty friends! It takes some specificity, but you can do this. Let me show you how!
So I started with going to the Sherlock (TV) section of Ao3. On the right we find this lovely section! ((I know Iâm going over things you already probably know, but I figure this post may go to new Ao3 users, so bear with me.))
Underneath this, I chose sort by Kudos, because thatâs a quick way to find most popular fics, for the sake of this demonstration.Â
With those filters on, we end up with this being our first two results:Â
As you can see, we have Nature and Nurture by earlgreytea68, and The Internet Is Not Just For Porn by cyerus. So what if I am utterly sick of seeing earlgreytea68 on my list? Letâs pretend Iâve read all their fics, or that I just donât like her, or whatever. I want this author out. I go to this section on the right:Â
In âSearch within resultsâ I type earlgreytea68 into the bar, with a minus sign in front. This gives me the following page, upon hitting the sort and filter button:
There goes earlgreytea68! But now Iâve decided that Crack is just not my thing, Iâm sick of that, too, for heavenâs sake, I want something reasonable in my gay slash fanfiction about detectives that solve crimes about glowing dogs and irish megalomaniacs. Heaven forbid this get ridiculous.
Well, then I add this to my search:
Which gets rid of everything with that tag. My results are now:
Performance in a Leading Role is now my first result!
You can do this as many times as you want; the biggest problem I have is trying to filter out multi-worded tags. For example, âSecret Relationshipâ is hard to filter. Better to go with authors you dislike or with words like âDubConâ.Â
I hope this helps! Also remember that googling site:archiveofourown.org and then adding search terms will mean google searches Ao3 for you, and sometimes that works far better.Â
Good luck!
An excellent in-depth guide! Thank you!!
omg changed my whole ao3 rarepair game
An excellent guide to filtering on AO3!
You can filter out phrases by enclosing them in quotes. For example, if ABO and Hydra Trash Party are not your things, try:
-âalpha/beta/omega dynamicsâ -âhydra trash partyâ
I have more advice!
Say, youâre in your random fandom- I went with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since Iâve been reading Iron Man stuff recently. Tony Stark is awesome.
But anyway, youâre on the page, and you see that there are 174,774 works! That is way too many for a casual afternoonâs browsing.
And you see that the first one is Peter Parker/Tony Stark and that is not your jam. It doesnât work for you, or it squicks you, whatever. Wouldnât life be easier if you could browse without seeing that pairing (or whatever pairing you donât like)? You can!
First, click on that pairing tag(You may want to open this in another tab, actually.):
and itâll take you to the page for that pairing tag. Click this button:
and then look at the address bar! The actual page is unimportant. Copy the numbers located here:
and go back to the original search page! Down on the side, in the same place you can get rid of other tags, type -relationship_ids:âthe number you just copiedâ
Then hit âsort and filterâ annnd⊠magic!
The fics with that pairing are gone! You can also do multiple pairings, get rid of any tags you donât like, and sort it by date or length or kudos, or whatever.
Enjoy.
Iâd just like to add that these sorts of search modifiers ALSO WORK IN GOOGLE AND MOST RESEARCH DATABASES. The more you know.
Just a quick reminder that AO3 uses Lucene as a search and index engine.
That means you can pretty much use all the Lucene Query Syntax in the âSeach within resultâ field.
I donât think AO3 indexes the whole fic for searching but definitely itâs meta data. Combined with Lucenes awesome query syntax you can do pretty much every search you heart desires.
Addtional Lucene Query Syntax that has not been mentioned yet and you might find useful:
Wildcard Searches
You can use wildcard searches within single terms. For a single character wildcard search use the â?â symbol. For a multiple character wildcard search use the â*â symbol.
AND/OR
Lucene allows you to combin terms through logic operators. Youâre looking for fics that are either âreunionâ or âenemies to loversâ?
Just put in >âreunionâ OR âenemies to loversâ< into the field
and you end up with all the stories that are either or but not both.
But wait, now youâre looking for fics that are both âreunionâ and âenemies to loversâ at the same time? Now worries Lucene got you covered.
Just change it into >â"reunionâ AND âenemies to loversââ<
and youâll get all the fics that mention both âreunionâ and âenemies to loversâ somewhere in their meta data (note: itâs not just tags. Itâs also title, summary âŠ)
Boosting
You can also boost specific terms when doing a multi term search.
You can use the â^â Operator followed by a number to boost a specific term.
Say youâre interested in fics that are either âfirst kissâ or âbed sharingâ but youâre much more interested in âbed sharingâ fics and feel they are more relevant.
You can use the search >âfirst kissâ âbed sharingâ^5<
to manipulate the order of your results in a matter that the score of every fic that contains beg sharing is multiplied by 5. Therefore all fics containing that term are given priority and shown at the top of the list.
You can also combine all of the above, target specifc fields (thatâs what you did with the ârelationsship_id:xxxâ) and many more things.
For more info about the Lucene query syntax check out Apacheâs Lucene Query doc.
^ sharing this because we all love fanfics and @itsmajel is a freaking nerd đ
Some of these searches can also be achieved via the âexcludeâ function in the search bar - this offers you for each section (ratings, category, relationships, tags, etc.) the most commonly used metadata for these fics, to check or uncheck (and thus exclude or not) as you please!
a lot of this thread is older than that function is!
the other thing that works wonders is installing Tampermonkey and then AO3 Savior. links are at Unofficial Browser Tools in AO3 FAQ. save a text file copy of your AO3 Savior Config script, to make it easier to apply the same settings to all your devices and also so you have a copy in case the script updates and thereby resets to the default examples. if youâre using Firefox for Android, youâll need to use Firefox Nightly for Android and how to use extension collections in order to get Tampermonkey to work on mobile, itâs not difficult just annoying.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
A few weeks ago, we mentioned that we were working on increasing extension support in the Firefox for Android Nightly pre-release channel. S


















