`search.json` not generated when all website pages use `format: dashboard`

[mschnetzer]

I have:

• searched the issue tracker for similar issues
• installed the latest version of Quarto CLI
• formatted my issue following the Bug Reports guide

Bug description

When using Quarto to create a website where all pages use format: dashboard, the website search index (search.json) is not generated, even when website search is explicitly enabled with website.search: true.

If at least one non-dashboard page is added to the website, search.json is generated again, but the dashboard pages are not included in the search index.

Steps to reproduce

Create a minimal Quarto website with the following _quarto.yml:

project:
  type: website

website:
  title: "Test"
  search: true

Create an index.qmd containing:

---
title: Home
format: dashboard
---

## Row

```{r}
1 + 1
```

Then run:

quarto render

Actual behavior

No search.json file is generated in the output directory.

Adding another page using format: dashboard does not change this behavior.

However, if a non-dashboard .qmd page is added to the website, search.json is generated again. In that case, the search index contains the non-dashboard page, but does not contain the dashboard pages.

For example:

• website with only dashboard pages → no search.json
• website with dashboard pages + one regular HTML page → search.json is generated, but only the regular HTML page is indexed

Expected behavior

search.json should be generated for a website with format: dashboard pages when website search is enabled with website.search: true.

The content of dashboard pages should also be included in the website search index, in the same way as regular website pages.

Your environment

• Quarto: 1.10.18
• Operating system: macOS Tahoe 26.5.2 (Intel)

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.10.18
[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /Users/matthiasschnetzer/Library/Caches/quarto
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.10.0: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.101.0: OK
      Deno version 2.7.14: OK
      Typst version 0.15.1: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.10.18
      Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: (not installed)
      Chrome Headless Shell: (not installed)
      VeraPDF: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: Installation From Path
      Path: /Library/TeX/texbin
      Version: 2026

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Chrome:  (not detected)

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

(|) Checking R installation...........*** Successfully loaded .Rprofile ***
[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.6.0
      Path: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources
      LibPaths:
        - /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6-x86_64/Resources/library
      knitr: 1.51
      rmarkdown: 2.31

[✓] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.14.6
      Path: /usr/local/opt/python@3.14/bin/python3.14
      Jupyter: (None)

      Jupyter is not available in this Python installation.
      Install with python3 -m pip install jupyter

[✓] Checking Julia installation...

[mcanouil]

Thanks for the report.

In the future, please read the contributing guidelines and use the proper issue template for bugs, or ask your question in Discussions instead of bypassing the guidelines.

@mschnetzer Please edit your report following the template: https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/bug_report.yml

Note that a dashboard is not a website page by definition.

[mschnetzer]

Thanks for pointing to the contributing guidelines and sorry for the inconvenience, @mcanouil. I hope my issue has now been submitted correctly. I was not aware that this would be an "enhancement" as I believed search is working well with both websites and dashboards.

The reason to mix website and dashboard type is that i need a dropdown navigation with subpages that contain dashboards. To my knowledge, a dashboard project can only handle pages without subpages.