I ran across this while looking for tools to provide something like the raw_id_fields
widget in Django’s list admin view. This post is a few years old at this point, but I think the solution it contains still works pretty well (caveat: I haven’t tried it yet).
I also enjoyed the author’s take on the conversation with support. I can definitely relate to that.
Also found the same info here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73995879/filter-django-admin-list-with-text-input
And a Django 5 compatible version here https://gist.github.com/hakib/1491a848e71078dae81fca48c46cc258