Add dropdown for search input history

[arackaf]

• VSCode Version: 1.10
• OS Version: Windows 10

Very closely related to #18735

This is a feature request. The UX around find is the one place where VS Code is not quite perfect - which speaks volumes to how wonderful this editor is. Wonderful job.

Basically, it would be great if, inside the Find box you could hit the down arrow and get a dropdown of prior searches which you could navigate between to re-search.

[roblourens]

You can navigate your find history now with alt+up/down. I know it's not super discoverable...

[arackaf]

Is there any way to SEE the search history, other than hitting them one at a time with alt up/down? That was the main crux of the feature request - to be able to see searchHistory visually, and more easily find what I want to re-search.

[roblourens]

Oh, I see. We don't have anything like that right now.

[rightaway]

@roblourens alt+up/down doesn't seem to work, is the command different on linux?

[roblourens]

I think it should be the same. You can check what search.history.showPrevious is bound to.

[colin-home]

This UX feature is one of the main things I miss from Notepad++. It's nice to be able to select the complicated regex I want from my search/replace history list visually, rather than scrolling through them one by one. Especially when applying them in sequence to perform some complex file transform.

[ssbarnea]

I am trying to switch to vscode from atom and the lack of history for search fields (especially files to include field).

On Atom, user can press Arrow-Up and Arrow-Down to navigate the values used in those fields in the past, which is very useful if you are usually search in various folders. There is no "visible" dropdown, just UP and DOWN to change the value, but this is more than enough to improve the UX.

[gulshan]

up/down instead of alt+up/down? Seems simple.

[roblourens]

I am trying to switch to vscode from atom and the lack of history for search fields (especially files to include field).

This exists, like I said above, alt+up/down

[aberonni]

up/down instead of alt+up/down? Seems simple.

+1 for this.

Also, would it be possible to have the same functionality on the other search fields too? I mean files to include, files to exclude etc... I tried alt + up/down on these fields but it doesn't seem to do anything.

[DRSDavidSoft]

@gjsjohnmurray Thanks for your addition, can you also expose showHistoryHint to the settings.json file, please? While this is very useful for newcomers, I'd like to keep hints of existing features that I'm aware of to a minimum.

Also, displaying a dropdown menu would be greatly beneficial to the existing Up/Down arrow keys.

[acjay]

Related to this, it would be great if I could save the combination of the search term, include filter, exclude filter, and settings. Sometimes, I do a complex search and have to do work to clean up the results to be representative of exactly what I'm looking for.

Even the ability to export the current search parameters as a JSON to the clipboard, which I could store elsewhere and import later, would be nice.

[TestUser013]

This issue is opened quite a long time. Is there any extension that can help with history handling? I guess it will be nice do define some presets patterns to a search pane. Is it technically possible to manipulate with the search pane from extension?

[gustavorps]

+1 for the feature

[gustavorps]

Guillermo Brachetta at Stack Overflow

From I believe version 1.41 of VSCode you have a separate search editor which I guess will do what you're looking for.

Just open you command palette and search for "Open search editor". You will be presented with a couple options (open and open to the side).

Screenshots

[Z-E-D]

I would also like to have a dropdown list with the searching history, which will remain after restart of the program, both for Search panel and for Find widget. Using Up/Down keys is not obvious and it doesn't allow us to see all recent searches in a list at once.

[arigit]

+1 as well. Also RE UX I have to say the current "up/down arrow -based history browsing" is not easily discoverable, there is no indication anywhere in the UI that the history exists. In my case I found out by googling and finding a github request for a "search history" feature - not great

[gjsjohnmurray]

@arigit when a history-keeping field is empty don't you see a hint message in it?

[gMakaan]

to speak about UX, we have nice search history inside references view within c/c++ extension (exactly what we want) - maybe use same approach for search view as a starting point?

[popyoung]

Does this feature conflict with the UI design code or something like that? I can't see why this issue still remains.

[elftech]

any progress of this feature?

[xander-marjoram]

This feature would be super valuable, for the same reasons as originally posted. I would also like to see the "files to include" and "files to exclude" fields saved appropriately too.

[yurymann]

This feature request collected quite a lot of votes and comments over the years. @andreamah, can we at least have some update on where this stands in vscode backlog?

I agree with OP that vscode is a great IDE in many ways, but missing basic features like this causes constant inconvenience and urge to look for other tools.

[freemedom]

A somewhat related solution: look in the database file saved to your hard disk.
vscode's search history is saved at C:\Users...\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\workspaceStorage...\state.vscdb. It is a sqlite database with workbench.search.history key in it.

[elftech]

A somewhat related solution: look in the database file saved to your hard disk. vscode's search history is saved at C:\Users...\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\workspaceStorage...\state.vscdb. It is a sqlite database with workbench.search.history key in it.

where is its alternative in unix-like systems?

[PavolAstrab]

I see the simple request to have button to select from history of used patterns in the box "files to include" is not implemented yet. The request is 7 years old.
Here is my suggestion
Add posibility to select patterns/masks in the box "files to include" in the search panel by clicking on the button - drop down list. Inspire by Total Commander - there is a clever solution.
I cannot add a picture of that, sorry.