How it works
The Find and Replace tool performs text substitution in a block of content — replacing all instances of a search string with a replacement string. It supports plain text matching, case-insensitive matching, whole-word matching, and full regular expression (regex) search patterns.
Find and replace is one of the most fundamental text editing operations. This browser-based version handles content that you don't want to paste into a full text editor — confidential drafts, client briefs, internal documents — and it runs entirely locally without any server.
How to use it: enter your search term in the Find field, your replacement in the Replace field, and the modified text appears in the output instantly. Toggle options: "Case Insensitive" matches both "Apple" and "apple", "Whole Word Only" avoids replacing "cat" inside "concatenate", and "Regex Mode" enables full JavaScript regex syntax including capture groups ($1, $2).
Regex examples: find `d{4}` to replace all 4-digit numbers, or `(?<=$)d+.d{2}` to match prices while keeping the dollar sign. The tool shows a match count so you know how many replacements were made.
Common workflows: anonymizing names in documents by replacing them with [REDACTED], updating a URL across a large block of text, normalizing inconsistent spellings (e.g., replacing "colour" with "color"), removing a repeated phrase from boilerplate text, and testing regex patterns interactively.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Yes. Enable 'Regex mode' to use JavaScript regular expressions in the Find field. Full regex syntax is supported including character classes, quantifiers, groups, lookaheads, and lookbehinds.
- Yes. In regex mode, use $1, $2 (etc.) in the replacement field to reference capture groups from the search pattern. For example, finding (\w+) (\w+) and replacing with $2 $1 swaps the two words.
- Whole word matching uses \b word-boundary anchors in regex, which match at letter/digit ↔ non-letter/digit boundaries. It works for standard alphanumeric words but may not work as expected for words containing hyphens or apostrophes.
- All occurrences are replaced simultaneously. A replacement count is shown after each operation so you know how many substitutions were made.