I’m a very happy user of Chris Wellons’ excellent RSS reader, elfeed. It has a very powerful search/filter function that lets you control what entries will be displayed and to search for an older entry that you want to revisit. Elfeed has a useful default filter that displays unread items younger than six months old. You can configure the default filter, of course, but the built-in one works well for me so I use it.
The problem is that I can never remember the syntax for the default filter so when I do a search, I always have to look up the incantation to restore the filter to “unread items from the last six months.” A consequence of that is that I didn’t use the search function as often as I otherwise would have. I’ve just discovered that I’ve been doing things the hard way. It turns out that if you clear the current filter, the default is restored. I don’t know if this is a recent addition or if it’s always been that way and I just missed it when I was learning to use Elfeed.
In either case, you can call elfeed-search-clear-filter or use the shortcut c to clear the current filter and restore the default. It’s embarrassing to admit that I was ignorant of a feature that makes the Elfeed experience so much better for this long. If you’re an Elfeed user and didn’t know this, you’re welcome.