Find in Files

You can search the contents of all text files in the current folder and its subfolders for matching text or regular expressions.

Tap the search field above a file listing and change the search mode from Filename to Content.

Settings

Tap the Search Settings button (“gear” icon) to open the file content search settings screen.

Here you can choose whether to match text or a regular expression. You can also specify whether the search should be case sensitive, diacritic sensitive, and whether to search for whole words only:

Text: Search for a simple text string. You can also search for “\n” or “\r” to find newline characters and “\t” to find tab characters. Enter “\\” to search for a backslash.
Regular Expression: Enable regular expression search. Textastic uses the ICU regular expression syntax.
Case Sensitive: By default, search is case-insensitive. Enable this setting to make search case sensitive and only find instances with matching case.
Diacritic Sensitive: By default, search ignores diacritic marks: for example, ‘ö’ is equal to ‘o’ and ‘é’ is equal to ‘e’. Enable this setting to only find letters with matching diacritic marks.

Note

this setting is not shown when using regular expression search. Regular expression search is always diacritic sensitive.
Whole Words: If you enable this setting, the search will only find whole words. For example, a search for “word” will find “word” but not “wording” or “password”.

Performing the Search

Enter your search term in the search text field and start the search by pressing the Return key.

After a folder search you will see the search results grouped by file and ordered by filename. Matches found in files in the current folder are shown before search results in subfolders.

Navigating Search Results

Tap a search result to open the file and jump to the search result.

As soon as the search is finished, you can collapse and expand the search results by tapping on a file name.

Use the context menu to expand or collapse all search results:

Note

Searching multiple files works in Local Files, iCloud and external folders (such as other folders in iCloud Drive or Git repositories in Working Copy).

Applying the Same Search Term and Settings to Single File Search

If you try to search in the currently active file while a search in multiple files is active, Textastic adds a Search for “…” button to the search text field.

Tap this button to quickly use the same search term and search settings in the single file search as in the multiple file search: