Search Here

Fast search for VS Code: text, files, folders and symbols in a single view, with a live code preview, include/exclude filters and saved scopes.

Opening it

The search comes in three forms that share the same engine and filters:

The Search button in the status bar does the same as Ctrl+Alt+F (hide it with searchHere.showStatusBarItem).

Moving between them keeps the query, mode, scope and filters:

• the Move to Editor Tab button in the panel's title bar turns the panel search into an editor tab and hides the panel
• the Move to Panel button in the editor tab's title bar does the opposite
• the dialog has Open in the Panel and Open in an Editor Tab buttons

Editor tabs are titled after their query (Search: useSocket).

If text is selected in the editor, it becomes the query.

Modes

• All: folders, files, symbols and text together, in sections
• Text: file contents (ripgrep)
• Files / Folders: names, with fuzzy matching (usock finds useSocket.ts; every space-separated term must match)
• Symbols: classes, functions, variables… from the installed language servers

Alt+1…5 switches mode. Alt+C match case, Alt+W whole word, Alt+R regex (lookaround and backreferences are supported through PCRE2).

Preview

Use ↑ ↓ to move through the results: the right side shows the file with syntax highlighting, the result line highlighted and every match marked. Folders show their content, which you can browse by clicking.

Enter opens, Ctrl+Enter opens to the side, double-clicking a line in the preview opens the file at that line.

Scopes (the tabs)

• Project: the whole workspace
• Open Files: only the files open in editor tabs
• Git Changes: modified, staged or untracked files
• Active Folder: the folder of the file you were working on
• Saved scopes: Save Scope turns the current scope and filters into a new tab, saved for this project or for all projects. Scopes can also be defined in .vscode/settings.json to share them with your team:

"searchHere.scopes": [
  { "name": "Backend", "paths": ["server"], "exclude": ["**/*.test.ts"] }
]

Filters

In the Include / Exclude fields, comma separated:

Toggles:

• .gitignore: respect .gitignore, .ignore and .rgignore. Turn it off to search node_modules, dist… too
• VS Code Excludes: apply files.exclude and search.exclude
• Hidden: include files and folders starting with a dot

searchHere.exclude holds permanent exclusions that always apply.

Explorer

Right-click files or folders (multi-selection works too) → Search Here:

• Search Here: restrict the search to those items
• Include in Search / Exclude from Search: add them to the view's filters (kept per project)
• Always Exclude (Workspace Settings): add them to searchHere.exclude in the workspace settings

How it works

• Text is searched with the ripgrep binary bundled with VS Code, so it works on Windows, macOS and Linux with nothing to install (searchHere.ripgrepPath lets you use another one).
• File and folder names come from an in-memory rg --files listing that is refreshed when files are created or deleted, so fuzzy matching runs in memory on every keystroke.
• Symbols come from the language servers through vscode.executeWorkspaceSymbolProvider.
• Text search reads files from disk, so unsaved changes are not found (the preview does show them).

Settings

Development

npm install
npm run build      # or: npm run watch

Press F5 in VS Code to launch a window with the extension loaded. npm run package builds the .vsix, which you can install from Extensions → … → Install from VSIX.