Smart Library Search is an AI-powered way to find videos in your library by describing what you're looking for in plain language, instead of matching keywords against titles.
Note: Smart Library Search is temporarily a free beta and access is open only to sales-managed accounts. To request access for your account, contact your Vimeo sales manager.
Where to find Smart Library Search
Once Smart Library Search is enabled for your account, the search bar in the top navigation becomes the Smart Search bar.
To open Smart Search:
- Click the search bar in your account's top navigation, or press ⌘/Ctrl + K.
- A panel opens where you can either:
- pick one of the suggested searches
- start typing your own description/question/keyword
- Press Enter or select a result to run the search.
Smart Search then opens your library search results with an AI overview at the top: a short written answer with links to the matching videos and the relevant moment in each one.
How it works
Type a question or description or keyword into the Smart Search bar. Vimeo AI will look across three sources at once to find the best matching results and/or answer the question:
- Your videos' titles, descriptions, and tags
- The transcript of what was said in each video
- An AI-generated understanding of what each video shows (summary, topics, and scene-by-scene descriptions)
It then shows up to 5 matching videos and a short written answer, with links to jump to the relevant moment in each video.
Examples of what you can ask:
- "What did she say about the <X>?"
- "Drone shots over a coastline"
- "My unlisted videos over 30 minutes"
- "How many of my videos are unlisted?"
- "Videos about pricing, only the long ones"
Search works in any language and answers come back in the language you asked in whenever possible.
The search bar still does everything you're used to
The Smart Search bar keeps all the ordinary search behaviour. You can still:
- search your library or all of Vimeo using the scope switcher,
- clear or re-run your recent searches, and
- search within a folder ("Search in: …").
Ordinary library search keeps working as before. Smart Search adds the AI overview on top. In some cases the regular results list may show videos matched on keywords that Vimeo AI detected, so the list and the AI answer stay consistent.
What Smart Library Search can and can't do
Smart Library Search is best at finding something that was said, filtering by video details, counting, sorting, and finding videos by what they show on screen (which works even for videos with no speech and no useful title).
Known Limitations:
- Videos only. Vimeo AI overview covers videos. Folders, showcases, and live events still use ordinary search.
- New videos. A newly uploaded video is searchable by title, description, and transcript right away; the deeper AI understanding of the visuals becomes available after the video finishes processing, typically within 10 minutes.
- Jump points are approximate. The moment shown for a video is the closest scene, the exact moment in the video might be a few seconds away.
- Not everything is supported. Smart Library Search can't total or average across your library, group or compare videos, show trends over time, answer follow-up questions, or make changes for you (renaming, deleting, moving, or sharing). It also won't answer general-knowledge questions.
- Empty results are normal. If nothing relevant exists, the search returns nothing rather than guessing.
Every search respects the permissions you already have, and Vimeo AI never changes anything in your library. Your library's existing filters (privacy, folder, date, and more) still apply.
Turning Smart Library Search on or off
Access to the feature itself is enabled by Vimeo (see Getting access below). Once it's available on your account, account admins can switch the Smart Search experience on or off:
- Go to your account's Team settings, then AI settings.
- Find Search & Ask AI Section and then Library smart search.
- Toggle it on or off.
What happens when it's off:
- The global search bar goes back to ordinary search (no Smart Search panel or AI suggestions).
- Library search results go back to the normal keyword results (no AI overview).
- Your library and all other search behaviour are unaffected.
Accuracy of AI-generated results
Smart Library Search may occasionally produce incomplete, inaccurate, or irrelevant results. Its responses are based on video metadata, transcripts, and AI-generated analysis of video content.
Keep the following in mind:
- The AI may misunderstand spoken content or visual information.
- A result may be related to your query without being the most relevant match.
- Suggested timestamps are approximate and may point to a nearby moment.
- Visual details may be missed if they appear briefly, are small, obscured, or unclear.
- Counts may be estimates or minimums rather than exact totals, depending on the query.
- Results in languages other than English may be less accurate.
Always review important information against the original video before relying on it.
Getting access
Smart Library Search is a temporary free beta open to sales-managed accounts only. To get access for your account, contact your Vimeo sales manager, who can enable the feature for your account.
Privacy
Smart Library Search follows the same privacy practices as Vimeo's other AI features. In particular Vimeo doesn't use your videos to train any AI model and applies Zero Data Retention with the third-party AI providers involved. See About Vimeo AI and Will Vimeo use my videos to train generative AI models? for details.