If you want to learn from real-world code or start contributing to open source, you need to know how to search smart. GitHub is a gold mine for developers, you just have to know how to dig.

 

Master GitHub Search Filters

GitHub supports advanced search operators. For example:

machine learning language:python stars:>500 pushed:>2024-01-01 license:mit

This means:

• Projects related to Machine Learning.
• Written in Python.
• Have more than 500 stars.
• Recently updated.
• Open source under the MIT license.

Other useful operators:

• language: to filter by programming language.
• stars: to find popular projects.
• pushed: to filter by last update date.
• license: to specify the open-source license.
• in: description to search within descriptions.

 

Search by Topic

Most projects are tagged with topics. Try these:

• github.com/topics/machine-learning
• github.com/topics/web-development

Just use the format: https://github.com/topics/

 

Projects for Beginners

Want to start small and learn by contributing? Look for issues labeled:

• good first issue
• help wanted

Example:

label:"good first issue" language:javascript stars:>100

You can also explore:

• goodfirstissue.dev
• up-for-grabs.net

 

Use GitHub Advanced Search

Go to the Advanced Search page: https://github.com/search/advanced

There you can select filters like language, license, stars, and last updated date without writing any operators manually.

 

Final Thoughts

Finding great open-source projects is not luck, it is a skill. With focused searches, you can discover amazing projects to learn from, get inspired by, or contribute to.