Search and Replace

Find and replace text with regular expressions, case sensitivity, whole word matching, and interactive query replace

Fresh provides powerful search and replace functionality for both single files and entire projects, with support for regular expressions, capture groups, and interactive replacement.

Quick Search

The fastest way to search in the current buffer:

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+F	Open search prompt
F3	Find next match
Shift+F3	Find previous match
Esc	Close search prompt

1. Open search

   Press Ctrl+F to open the search toolbar at the bottom of the screen

2. Enter search term

   Type the text you want to find

3. Navigate matches

   Use F3 to jump to the next match, or Shift+F3 for the previous match

4. Close search

   Press Esc to close the search prompt

Search and Replace

Replace text in the current buffer:

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+R	Open search and replace prompt
Ctrl+Alt+R	Interactive query replace (y/n/!/q for each match)

1. Open replace

   Press Ctrl+R to open the replace toolbar

2. Enter search and replacement

   Type the search term, then Tab to the replacement field

3. Replace

   Press Enter to replace the next match, or use “Replace All” to replace all occurrences

Search Options

The search toolbar includes toggle buttons for fine-tuning your search:

Case Sensitive

Match exact uppercase/lowercase. When disabled, foo matches Foo, FOO, and foo.

Whole Word

Match complete words only. When enabled, cat won’t match category or scat.

Regex

Use regular expressions for pattern matching. Enables powerful search patterns and capture groups.

Click the toggle buttons in the search toolbar, or use keyboard shortcuts to toggle them (shown in the toolbar).

Regular Expressions

Enable regex mode for powerful pattern matching:

Basic Regex Patterns

Word boundaries

\bfunction\b
# Matches "function" as a complete word only

Capture Groups and Replacement

When regex mode is enabled, you can use capture groups in your replacement string:

Numbered Groups

Use $1, $2, etc. to reference captured groups:

Search: (\w+): (\w+)
Replace: $2: $1
Result: name: value → value: name

Named Groups

Use ${name} syntax for named capture groups:

Search: (?<key>\w+): (?<val>\w+)
Replace: ${val}: ${key}
Result: name: value → value: name

Regex Examples

Swap function parameters

Search: function (\w+)\((\w+), (\w+)\)
Replace: function $1($3, $2)

Swaps the order of two function parameters.

Convert camelCase to snake_case

Search: ([a-z])([A-Z])
Replace: $1_$2

Then convert to lowercase separately.

Add quotes around words

Search: \b(\w+)\b
Replace: "$1"

Wraps each word in double quotes.

Extract domain from URLs

Search: https?://([^/]+)/.*
Replace: $1

Extracts just the domain from full URLs.

Interactive Query Replace

For precise control over which matches to replace, use query replace:

1. Start query replace

   Press Ctrl+Alt+R or use “Query Replace” from the command palette

2. Enter search and replacement

   Type the search term and replacement text

3. Decide for each match

   Fresh prompts for each match:

   • y — Replace this match
   • n — Skip this match
   • ! — Replace all remaining matches
   • q — Quit query replace

Query replace is perfect when you want to replace most occurrences but skip a few specific ones.

Find Selection

Quickly find the next occurrence of the currently selected text:

Shortcut	Action
Alt+N or Ctrl+F3	Find next occurrence of selection
Alt+P or Ctrl+Shift+F3	Find previous occurrence of selection

1. Select text

   Use mouse or keyboard to select a word or phrase

2. Find next

   Press Alt+N or Ctrl+F3 to jump to the next occurrence

3. Create multi-cursor (optional)

   Use Ctrl+D to add a cursor at the next match for multi-cursor editing

This is different from Ctrl+D which adds a cursor at the next match — find selection just moves the cursor without creating additional cursors.

Project-Wide Search

Search across all files in your project using git grep:

1. Open project search

   Open command palette (Ctrl+P) and search for “Search and Replace in Project”

2. Enter search term

   Type the text or regex pattern to search for

3. View results

   Fresh searches all git-tracked files and displays matches with file locations

4. Navigate to match

   Click or select a result to jump to that location

Git Integration: Project search uses git grep and only searches files tracked by git. Untracked and ignored files are excluded.

Git Grep Features

Fresh’s project search leverages git grep for fast, efficient searching:

Fast

Git grep is highly optimized and can search large repositories quickly

Respects .gitignore

Automatically excludes files in .gitignore, node_modules, build artifacts, etc.

Regex Support

Use regular expressions for complex search patterns

Context Aware

Shows surrounding lines for context in search results

Search in Selection

Limit your search to just the selected text:

1. Select region

   Use mouse or keyboard to select the text region you want to search within

2. Open search

   Press Ctrl+F to open search

3. Search

   Your search will be limited to the selected region

This is useful for searching within a specific function, class, or block of code without getting results from the entire file.

Search Tips and Tricks

Use multi-cursor with find next

Instead of replace all, use Ctrl+D (add cursor at next match) to create multiple cursors at each occurrence. This gives you visual feedback and more control — you can edit each occurrence differently if needed, and undo is a single operation.

Combine whole word with regex

Enable both “Whole Word” and “Regex” to match patterns at word boundaries only. For example, \d+ with whole word enabled matches standalone numbers but not digits within words.

Test regex before replacing

Use Ctrl+F with regex mode first to verify your pattern matches what you expect. Then use Ctrl+R to replace.

Use query replace for risky changes

When making potentially breaking changes (like renaming variables), use Ctrl+Alt+R (query replace) to review each match before replacing.

Search for empty lines

Use regex mode and search for ^$ to find empty lines. Replace with nothing to remove them.

Advanced Regex Patterns

Lookahead

function(?=\()
# Matches "function" only if followed by "("

Search Performance

Large Files: Fresh handles search efficiently even in multi-gigabyte files. Regex searches may be slower than literal string searches, but Fresh maintains low latency through incremental searching.

Project Search: Uses git grep which is highly optimized. First search may be slower as git indexes, but subsequent searches are very fast.

Related Documentation

Multi-Cursor Editing

Use Ctrl+D to add cursors at matches

Editing Features

Learn about text manipulation

Command Palette

Access all search commands