diff --git a/docs/conf.py b/docs/conf.py
index d0d1306a1..29491e947 100644
--- a/docs/conf.py
+++ b/docs/conf.py
@@ -15,9 +15,6 @@
 
 # -- General configuration ------------------------------------------------
 
-
-needs_sphinx = "1.7"  # autosummary bugfix
-
 # General information
 project = "anndata"
 author = f"{project} developers"
@@ -52,6 +49,7 @@
     "sphinx_autodoc_typehints",  # needs to be after napoleon
     "sphinx_issues",
     "sphinx_design",
+    "sphinx_search.extension",
     "sphinxext.opengraph",
     "scanpydoc",  # needs to be before linkcode
     "sphinx.ext.linkcode",
@@ -126,7 +124,8 @@ def setup(app: Sphinx):
 # -- Options for HTML output ----------------------------------------------
 
 
-html_theme = "sphinx_book_theme"
+# The theme is sphinx-book-theme, with patches for readthedocs-sphinx-search
+html_theme = "scanpydoc"
 html_theme_options = dict(
     use_repository_button=True,
     repository_url="https://github.com/scverse/anndata",
diff --git a/docs/release-notes/0.10.5.md b/docs/release-notes/0.10.5.md
index 130c2d0cf..a61bf758c 100644
--- a/docs/release-notes/0.10.5.md
+++ b/docs/release-notes/0.10.5.md
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
 
 ```{rubric} Documentation
 ```
+* Re-add search-as-you-type, this time via `readthedocs-sphinx-search` {pr}`1311` {user}`flying-sheep`
 
 ```{rubric} Performance
 ```
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 262722e9b..f9f0b0d39 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -65,18 +65,19 @@ dev = [
 ]
 doc = [
     "sphinx>=4.4",
-    "sphinx-book-theme>=1.0.1",
+    "sphinx-book-theme>=1.1.0",
     "sphinx-autodoc-typehints>=1.11.0",
     "sphinx-issues",
     "sphinx-copybutton",
     "sphinxext.opengraph",
     "nbsphinx",
-    "scanpydoc>=0.9",
+    "scanpydoc[theme,typehints] >=0.13.4",
     "zarr",
     "awkward>=2.0.7",
     "IPython",                          # For syntax highlighting in notebooks
     "myst_parser",
     "sphinx_design>=0.5.0",
+    "readthedocs-sphinx-search",
 ]
 test = [
     "loompy>=3.0.5",