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Autocomplete characters

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The autocomplete characters provide a quick way of entering field values into Markdown fields. When you start typing a word in a Markdown field with one of the following characters, GitLab progressively autocompletes against a set of matching values. The string matching is not case sensitive.

Character Autocompletes Relevant matches shown
~ Labels 20
% Milestones 5
@ Users and groups 10
# Issues 5
! Merge requests 5
& Epics 5
$ Snippets 5
: Emoji 5
/ Quick Actions 100

When you select an item from the list, the value is entered in the field. The more characters you enter, the more precise the matches are.

Autocomplete characters are useful when combined with Quick Actions.

User autocomplete

Assume your GitLab instance includes the following users:

Username Name
alessandra Rosy Grant
lawrence.white Kelsey Kerluke
leanna Rosemarie Rogahn
logan_gutkowski Lee Wuckert
shelba Josefine Haley

User autocompletion sorts by the users whose username or name start with your query first. For example, typing @lea shows leanna first and typing @ros shows Rosemarie Rogahn and Rosy Grant first. Any usernames or names that include your query are shown afterwards in the autocomplete menu.

You can also search across the full name to find a user. To find Rosy Grant, even if their username is for example alessandra, you can type their full name without spaces like @rosygrant.