Find Bar
Press ⌘F (Command+F) while in the Editor to bring up the Find Bar.
The Find Bar allows you to search the contents of the document for a particular query you enter in the Find field. Optionally, you can also replace found instances of the query with text you enter in the Replace field.
Aside from typing your query manually, you can also use the Find menu > Use Selection for Find (⌘Command+E) menu item to automatically fill the Find field with the current selection in the Editor. Find > Use Selection for Replace (⇧⌘E) does the same for the Replace field.
When your query appears multiple times in the document, you can use the < Back and > Forward buttons to select each found occurrence, as well as the menu items in Find > Find Next and Find Previous (⌘G and ⇧⌘G, respectively). A count of how many instances of the query were found will also appear to the right of the Find field.
Clicking the Replace button will replace only the currently selected instance of the query with the contents of the Replace field, while clicking the All button will replace all instances of the query. Click Done to close the Find Bar.
Search Scopes
There are a few additional options you can configure to control the scope of your searches in the Find Bar.
Find Field Only
- Matching
- You can choose whether the search should find any results that contain the query, only results that completely match the word in the query, or only match the beginning or end of a particular word. Nova can also treat the query as a regular expression, and find results matching the regex pattern you provide.
Match Case
- Only return results that exactly match the capitalization of the query as written.
Search Within Selection
- Only search within the currently selected text in the editor.
Replace Field Only
Preserve Case
- Attempt to preserve the case or capitalization of the original text being replaced.
Wildcards
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In addition to simply entering text in the Find and Replace fields, Nova also supports using Wildcards. Wildcards are special tokens you can insert into queries to search for any characters matching particular patterns, such as digits, whitespace, or word characters. Click the Wildcards can be mixed with regular search queries. For instance, say a CSS document defines colors by the name |
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The available Wildcard tokens are:
- Any Characters: Matches any characters, including whitespace. For instance, searching for
example(ANY)Querywill matchexample qZ93@# Query, but notexampleQuery. - Word Characters: Matches any characters considered word characters. This includes most letters and numbers, and is comparable to
\win a regular expression. - Non-ASCII Characters: Matches any characters that are not part of the ASCII encoding set (Wikipedia), such as accented characters, non-Latin characters, emoji, or symbols.
- Digits: Matches any numbers 0-9.
- Hexadecimal Digits: Matches any hexadecimal numbers, 0-F, case-insensitive.
- Whitespace: Matches any whitespace characters, including spaces, tabs, and newlines.
- Tab: Matches any tab characters.
- Word Break: Matches any whitespace between words.
- Line Break: Matches any newline characters.
NOTE: The only supported Wildcards in the Replace field are Tabs and Line Breaks.
Search History
At the bottom of the Find field’s Wildcard menu, you’ll find your search history. You can quickly reuse previous recent Find queries from here. Click Clear Recent Patterns to clear your search history.
The Find Pasteboard
Like many native Mac apps, Nova’s Find fields make use of a macOS system feature known as the Find Pasteboard. This allows the contents of Nova’s Find fields to be shared with other apps on your Mac. For instance, the Find query you use in Safari or TextEdit’s Find bar will appear automatically in Nova’s Find Bar as well, and vice versa.
If you don’t want this behavior, it can be disabled in Nova’s Settings > Workspace > Use Find Pasteboard.
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