Search and Replace

• Search: Press Ctrl+F to open the search prompt.
• Replace: Press Ctrl+R to open the search and replace prompt.
• Query Replace: Press Ctrl+Alt+R, or use "Query Replace" from the command palette, for interactive replacement (y/n/!/q prompts for each match). The match being asked about is shown in the current-match color, so you can check exactly what a regex matched before answering. Leave the replacement empty to delete matches one by one.

The search toolbar shows toggle buttons for:

• Case Sensitive (Alt+C) — match exact case
• Whole Word (Alt+W) — match complete words only
• Regex (Alt+R) — use regular expressions

Case Sensitivity

Searches fold case by default: todo finds TODO. Every search surface can say otherwise, and each remembers what you told it:

Surface	Where the toggle is	How long the choice lasts
Find / Replace prompt (Ctrl+F, Ctrl+R)	Case Sensitive on the options row, Alt+C	Saved with the workspace
Universal Search (Live Grep)	Case on the toolbar, Alt+C	The rest of the session
Search & Replace panel	Case checkbox on the panel, Alt+C	The rest of the session, panel reopens included
Git Grep	Case checkbox on the prompt toolbar (unbound; git_grep_toggle_case)	The rest of the session

To start somewhere else, set the default in your config:

{
  "editor": {
    "search": {
      "case_sensitive": true
    }
  }
}

case_sensitive seeds all four surfaces; flipping a toggle still wins from there, and the Find prompt saves a choice that differs from it with the workspace.

A workspace records each option separately, and only where it differs from the setting above, so one you never changed there still follows the config.

Workspaces saved by an earlier Fresh recorded the toggles on every save, whether or not you had chosen anything, from a prompt that started case-sensitive. Reopening one keeps the toggles you can be shown to have set — a whole-word or regex search survives — but its case sensitivity falls back to the setting above, because in those files "on" is indistinguishable from "never touched". The section's other keys — whole_word, regex, confirm_each — reach the Find/Replace prompt and the Search & Replace panel; see Configuration → Search for which applies where.

Stepping Through Matches

With the search bar open, F3 jumps to the next match and Shift+F3 to the previous one without closing the bar, so the query stays editable and the toggles stay reachable. The status bar reports Match N of M as you go. The same keys work after the bar is closed, continuing from the last search.

Enter jumps to the current match and closes the bar; Esc cancels.

The match you land on is selected in full, and drawn in its own current-match style (bold, in a distinct color) so it stands out from the other highlighted matches. For a regex search this shows exactly how far the match reaches. Because it is a selection, Delete removes the whole match and typing replaces it; F3 then continues with the next match, even one that now starts where the deleted match was. The style comes from the theme's search.current_match_bg and search.current_match_fg. Like a syntax color, current_match_fg can bundle text attributes: {"color": [255, 255, 255], "modifier": ["bold"]}; a bare color means no attributes. In a theme that doesn't set them, they fall back to editor.selection_bg and editor.fg (see Theme fallbacks).

Regex and Capture Groups

When regex mode is enabled, the replacement string supports capture groups: $1, $2, or ${name} for named groups. For example, searching for (\w+): (\w+) and replacing with $2: $1 swaps the two words around the colon.

The replacement also interprets the standard escape sequences \n (newline), \t (tab), \r (carriage return), and \\ (literal backslash), so you can insert line breaks or indentation. Plain-text (non-regex) replacement treats these as literal characters.

In regex mode, ^ and $ anchor at line boundaries, so an anchored pattern matches on every line.

Clearing Highlights

Run Clear Search Highlights from the command palette to remove the active search highlights from the buffer.

Project-Wide Search and Replace

Use "Search and Replace in Project" from the command palette to search across all git-tracked files in the project. Press Alt+Enter to replace all matches across the project. Works with unsaved buffers and large files, up to 10,000 results.

Use the Files field to limit project search to comma-separated globs. A pattern without a directory separator matches file names at any depth (for example, *.rs); a pattern with a separator matches workspace-relative paths (for example, src/** or tests/*.rs).