diff --git a/src/databases/officer_db/src/queries/soulseek.ts b/src/databases/officer_db/src/queries/soulseek.ts
index 0d250ecc..5b28afbe 100644
--- a/src/databases/officer_db/src/queries/soulseek.ts
+++ b/src/databases/officer_db/src/queries/soulseek.ts
@@ -151,6 +151,32 @@ export type BrowseDirPage = {
 };
 type BrowseDirPageParams = { userId: number; username: string; q?: string; limit: number; offset: number };
 
+// These names come off strangers' filesystems, so they're littered with typographic punctuation that no
+// keyboard produces: curly apostrophes, en dashes, and U+2010 HYPHEN, which is pixel-identical to '-'.
+// Typing "Hell's Ditch" or "1984-1985" found nothing at all, so both sides get folded to ASCII first.
+// Same character set on both sides — extend one and you must extend the other.
+const FOLD_FROM = '‘’ʼ＇“”‐‑‒–—―− ';
+const FOLD_TO = "''''\"\"------- ";
+// Not in the translate() pair because it's one character standing in for three.
+const ELLIPSIS = '…';
+
+const foldPunctuation = (value: string): string => {
+  let out = '';
+  for (const ch of value) {
+    const at = FOLD_FROM.indexOf(ch);
+    out += at === -1 ? ch : FOLD_TO[at];
+  }
+  return out.split(ELLIPSIS).join('...');
+};
+
+// Postgres reads '%', '_' and '\' as LIKE metacharacters, so unescaped input meant a typed '_' matched
+// every folder in the share while a pasted path — and every name here IS a backslash-delimited path —
+// silently matched none. Backslash stays the escape character, which is why it's escaped first.
+const likePattern = (term: string): string => `%${foldPunctuation(term).replace(/[\\%_]/g, (ch) => `\\${ch}`)}%`;
+
+/** The column, folded the same way `likePattern` folds the term. */
+const foldedName = sql`replace(translate(${soulseekBrowseDirs.name}, ${FOLD_FROM}, ${FOLD_TO}), ${ELLIPSIS}, '...')`;
+
 /**
  * A page of a peer's cached folders, name-filtered. Files are excluded — that's the whole point of
  * paging here, and they're fetched per folder on expand.
@@ -165,9 +191,10 @@ export async function getSoulseekBrowseDirs(params: BrowseDirPageParams): Promis
   if (!snap) return { dirs: [], total: 0 };
 
   const term = q?.trim();
-  // ILIKE with a leading wildcard can't use the btree index, but 18k rows per snapshot is a trivial scan.
+  // ILIKE with a leading wildcard can't use the btree index, so this was already a scan of the snapshot's
+  // ~18k rows — which is why folding the column here costs nothing on top.
   const where = term
-    ? and(eq(soulseekBrowseDirs.snapshotId, snap.id), ilike(soulseekBrowseDirs.name, `%${term}%`))
+    ? and(eq(soulseekBrowseDirs.snapshotId, snap.id), sql`${foldedName} ilike ${likePattern(term)}`)
     : eq(soulseekBrowseDirs.snapshotId, snap.id);
 
   const [dirs, [count]] = await Promise.all([