Commentarii Roamani

In this issue we explore more Roam Depot extensions that encourage search and discovery. Roam is built to connect ideas across time, and with Search+ and Roam Portal, that ability becomes even more powerful.

Roam Depot Gems

To install an extension, go to the left sidebar, and open Roam Depot. Search for the extension and click Install. You can toggle it with Cmd + P.

​Roam Portal by Dharam Kapila​

As the name suggests, Roam Portal is a gateway into your graph: a search engine that lets you step through and explore it from new angles.

Roam Portal turns search into exploration. Filter by page, user, or date, then shift into 2D or 3D visualizations of your graph. Locations mentioned in your notes appear on a map, timelines show ideas surfacing over months and years, and references can be sorted by frequency or attributes. Even tweets, images, and reactions inside your graph become searchable. Instead of narrowing in, Roam Portal is about stepping back and seeing your graph from a new angle.

Say you’re preparing for a presentation. With this extension, you can trace when the main theme first appeared in your notes, see which related topics clustered around it, and spot sources you haven’t revisited in a while. Rather than scrolling through a flat list, you get a map of how your ideas developed over time. That perspective helps you notice angles you might have overlooked + gives your work a stronger backbone.

​Search+ by hyc​

Search+ is Roam’s native search on steroids.

Where the default search gives you a list, Search+ goes further. You can narrow queries by page or time range, sort results by date created or edited, and save searches you’ll want to revisit. It supports exact phrases, case sensitivity, and regular expressions for precise control in large graphs. You can copy results as references or open them in the sidebar, making search part of the building process instead of just retrieval. These features are especially useful when you’re working on a focused project.

Imagine you’re writing a paper on Russian realism in literature. With Search+, you filter all your notes tied to authors like Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gogol, isolate your most recent highlights, and save that search for one-click access the next time you open Roam. From there, you can drop the results directly into your draft page, where they’re ready to be shaped into an argument. Search shifts from being a lookup tool to something closer to a staging ground for ideas.

New Roam Depot extension 🛒

​Roam References Radar by hyc: A Roam extension that surfaces hidden links in your graph by suggesting relevant references. It helps you spot connections you might have missed, expanding the web of ideas as you go.

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