Search History Explorer

Track, filter, tag and reuse your VS Code searches — globally or per workspace.

Search History Explorer adds a dedicated Search History view to the Activity Bar with a built-in, native-style search bar on top. Bind it to Ctrl+Shift+F and every search you run flows through it — saved automatically with its query, flags, replace text and include/exclude patterns — so you can find that one clever regex from last week and re-run it in a single click.

Features

• Native-style search bar — a search box that mirrors VS Code's own Find in Files widget (query + Match Case / Whole Word / Regex toggles that highlight when active, plus Replace and clearly-labelled Include / Exclude fields), docked at the top of the view. Running a search from here saves it and launches the native panel.
• Results in the view — press Enter and the matches appear right below the search bar, grouped by file with the matching line and highlighted hit; click any line to jump straight to it in the editor. No context switch — one window for searching, results and history. Results refresh live as you edit files (debounced), just like the native Search view. A one-click Open in VS Code Search hands the same search to the native panel when you want it (e.g. to replace across files).
• Search as you type — turn on searchHistory.searchOnType and results update as you type; the Search & Save button hides and each query you pause on is saved to history automatically.
• Automatic capture — rebind Ctrl+Shift+F to the bar (on by default) and every search you launch is appended to your history without any extra step. As you type, matching past searches (favorites first) appear as suggestions you can click to restore in full.
• Rich history — each entry records the query, timestamp, workspace name, replace text, include/exclude globs, an optional free-text note, and the Regex / Match Case / Whole Word flags.
• Re-run instantly — click an entry to re-run it and see its matches directly in the view (or send it on to the native panel).
• Folders — group topic-related searches into folders and drag entries into them (or use Move to Folder…). Folders can be global (shared across every workspace) or workspace-specific.
• Filter & Sort menu — the title-bar filter is a dropdown (like the Explorer's … menu): set a text/regex filter, filter by tag, toggle favorites-only, and clear — all clearly labelled, no guessing.
• Tags & favorites — tag searches freely and toggle the ⭐ directly on a row (outline ↔ filled). Favorites sort to the top and are protected from automatic pruning.
• Global ↔ Workspace scope — toggle between all searches and only those made in the current workspace, straight from the view's title bar.
• Automatic de-duplication — re-running an identical search bumps its usage count instead of cluttering the list (configurable).

Getting started

1. Open the Search History view from the Activity Bar (the magnifier-with-clock icon), or press Ctrl+Shift+F (rebound to focus the bar — see Capturing searches).
2. Type in the search bar at the top. Use the inline Aa / ab / .* buttons to toggle Match Case, Whole Word and Regex — active toggles are highlighted just like the native Search box. Click the › chevron to reveal Replace, and fill the files to include / exclude fields as needed.
3. Press Enter (or Search & Save): the search runs and its results appear in the view, grouped by file — click a line to open it at the match. The search is also saved to your history. Use Open in VS Code Search to hand it to the native panel.
4. Later, click any entry to run it again, toggle its ⭐, or right-click for Move to Folder…, tags, note, copy and delete.

Folders

Create a folder with New Folder (⊞ in the title bar) — it's created in the current scope, so a folder made while viewing Workspace history stays with that workspace, while one made in Global view is shared everywhere. Group a search by dragging it onto a folder, or via Move to Folder… in its right-click menu (which can also create a new folder on the spot). Deleting a folder keeps its searches and moves them back to Ungrouped.

Title-bar controls

Settings

Architecture

The extension deliberately uses VS Code's native Memento storage (globalState) rather than an embedded database. This decision was made after evaluating both options:

Because search history is naturally bounded (and capped via maxEntries), and because regex matching has to happen in JavaScript either way, Memento is the faster and simpler choice. The storage layer (src/storage.ts) is written against the small Memento interface, so it stays fully unit-testable and could be swapped for another backend without touching the UI.

Capturing searches & running them in-view

VS Code does not expose an API to observe or intercept queries typed into the native Search panel, nor a supported API to run a text search and read the results back (workspace.findTextInFiles is still a proposed API). Rather than depend on undocumented internals, this extension owns the entry point: its search bar captures the query, flags, replace text and globs at the moment you launch a search.

To show results in the view, it runs the search itself: it prefers the ripgrep binary that ships inside VS Code, and falls back to a pure-vscode-API scan (findFiles + readFile + regex) if that binary cannot be located — so there are no bundled native binaries and the extension stays cross-platform. Results stream in file-by-file and respect your include/exclude globs (and, via the fallback, your files.exclude / search.exclude settings). For an exhaustive search over a very large repository, or to run a replace across files, use Open in VS Code Search to hand the same query to the native panel (via workbench.action.findInFiles).

By default the extension rebinds Ctrl+Shift+F to focus its search bar, so your usual search shortcut now captures automatically. If you prefer VS Code's built-in shortcut, remove the binding in File → Preferences → Keyboard Shortcuts (search for searchHistory.newSearch).

Known limitations: searches you start by clicking the Search icon in the Activity Bar directly (bypassing the bar) are not captured. The in-view results are read-only (find and jump); replacing across files is delegated to the native panel. Result fidelity closely follows ripgrep, but some .gitignore edge cases and context lines differ from the native Search view.

Project layout

Development

This project uses Bun for all package management and scripts, oxlint for linting, and TypeScript 7.0.2.

bun install            # install dependencies
bun run check-types    # tsc --noEmit
bun run lint           # oxlint
bun run compile        # type-check, lint & bundle with esbuild
bun run test           # headless VS Code integration + unit tests

Tests run under @vscode/test-electron; on CI they are wrapped with xvfb-run.

License

MIT © 2026 ActiveClientMods