Vscode: Add dropdown for search input history

[arackaf]

• VSCode Version: 1.10
• OS Version: Windows 10

Very closely related to https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/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.

[corob-msft]

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.

[Simran-B]

A dropdown for the search history might open up the possibility to no longer undo the search input when Ctrl+Z is hit. I found myself a lot of times doing a find & replace, but messing up either the search expression or accidentally replacing a match which I meant to skip, hit Ctrl+Z to undo the substitution but it actually reverts my search expression because the find widget has the focus, not the editor.

[Maxxee]

Unbelievable, after several years a drop-down list is still not implemented.
This ignorance is very offensive to me.

[SlipstreamPhil]

Just adding my voice to request this feature please. The keyboard shortcut works for me, but a more discoverable UI would be swell.

[acestronautical]

This is not a duplicate of #48881
The ability to save/bookmark certain searches/regexps is a different feature than being able to look back through history

[sergey-beloglazov]

+1
Here an explanation, why using list is not the same as using alt+up/down.
An example concerns the right box for searching in the current file.
For example, I made 3 sequent searches an I want repeat the first one from the position where my cursor is currently in. I press alt+up and it make previous search, that I don't need. Cursor position is moved to an undesired place. So I can't use alt+up/down in this case. I have to enter the search text once more. So I can't use the search history in such cases.
The left global search doesn't have a "current position", so in this case it woks fine, besides everything said before about usability.