Search, replace, and navigation

This guide shows you how to find text in a file, jump to a line or a file by name, and move around a project from the keyboard. To jump from a \ref or \cite key to its target, or to list every use of a label with Find references, see Labels, references, and navigation.

Open a project in the editor before you start. Every route here except the command palette acts on an open project.

Known limitations

• Search covers the open file only. Typeward has no project-wide text search.
• Typeward has no multiple cursors. The editor keeps one selection range, so Ctrl+D (Cmd+D on macOS) steps between occurrences rather than adding a cursor.
• The find bar in visual editing mode has no replace field and no regexp toggle.

Find and replace in the open file

The search panel opens in the source pane and acts on the file in the active tab.

1. Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on macOS) to open the search panel.
2. Type your text in the Find field.
3. Press F3 or Ctrl+G (Cmd+G on macOS) to step to the next match, or Shift+F3 or Ctrl+Shift+G (Cmd+Shift+G on macOS) to step back.
4. Optional: Type the replacement in the Replace field.
5. Optional: Select replace or replace all.
6. Press Escape to close the panel.

The panel also carries the match case, regexp, and by word checkboxes, plus the next, previous, and all buttons.

Tip

Ctrl+D selects the word under the cursor, and each further press moves the selection to the next occurrence of it.

Find text in visual editing mode

While Visual editing for LaTeX renders a .tex file, Ctrl+F opens a compact find bar at the top of the source pane instead of the full panel.

1. Press Ctrl+F to open the find bar.
2. Type your text in the field whose placeholder reads Find in document….
3. Press Enter to step to the next match, or Shift+Enter to step back.
4. Press Escape to close the bar.

The counter gives your position as 3 of 12, and reads 0 results when nothing matches. Selecting the ↑, ↓, and ✕ buttons does the same work, and their tooltips read Previous (Shift+Enter), Next (Enter), and Close (Escape).

The bar searches the text you can see, case-insensitively and literally, so hidden markup never matches. Typeward counts every widget and every hidden run as a single space, and selects a match where it sits. To replace, to use regexp, or to search for commands, switch to Source mode.

Go to a line or a matching bracket

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+G (Cmd+Alt+G on macOS) to open the Go to line prompt, prefilled with the current line number.
2. Type a destination and press Enter, or select go.

The prompt accepts four forms of destination.

What you type	Where the cursor lands
240	Line 240
+10 or -5	Ten lines forward, or five lines back
50%	Halfway through the file
120:8	Line 120, column 8

To move the cursor to the bracket matching the one beside it, press Ctrl+Shift+\ (Cmd+Shift+\ on macOS).

Open a file by name

1. Press Ctrl+P (Cmd+P on macOS) to run Go to file, which opens the command palette prefilled with the file: prefix.
2. Type part of a file name, and the matches rank by file name first and project-relative path second.
3. Press Enter to open the file in a new tab at line 1, or to activate its existing tab with the cursor and scroll position intact.

The file: prefix switches the palette to files-only matching, so typing file: yourself in the Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on macOS) palette does the same thing.

Go to file indexes text files only: .tex, .typ, .md, .bib, .cls, .sty, .bst, .def, .ldf, .fd, .clo, .cnf, .txt, .csv, .json, .yaml/.yml, and .toml. Indexing stops at 2000 files and 12 folder levels deep, and skips dot-directories such as .git and .typeward, along with node_modules, build, out, and dist.

Typeward caches the index and refreshes it when files change on disk. Go to file runs only while a project is open in the editor.

Jump through the Outline

The Outline sits under the sidebar tabs, with the hint document structure, and shows the active file’s heading structure as a tree.

• Select an entry to jump the cursor to that line.
• Select a chevron to fold or unfold a branch.
• Select the Outline header to collapse or expand the whole section.

Typeward highlights the heading your cursor sits under. Typeward refreshes the tree about half a second after you stop typing, and immediately when you switch files.

What counts as a heading depends on the file format.

Format	Outline entries
LaTeX	\part through \subparagraph, including starred forms
Typst	= heading lines; the number of = characters sets the nesting level
Markdown	# headings (fenced code blocks are ignored)

When a language server is running for the file, texlab for LaTeX or tinymist for Typst, the Outline uses its document symbols instead of the built-in parser. See Autocomplete, snippets, and formatting.

A file with no headings shows No headings in this file. File types with no heading structure, such as .bib, .txt, and .json, show Outline unavailable for this file type.

Move between tabs

• Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycle forward and backward through the open tabs, wrapping at the ends. Both use the literal Ctrl key on macOS as well, because Cmd+Tab belongs to the operating system app switcher.
• Ctrl+W (Cmd+W on macOS) closes the active tab. Typeward asks first when that tab has unsaved changes, offering Discard changes or Keep open.
• ArrowLeft, ArrowRight, Home, and End move between tabs and activate them while the tab strip has focus.

Opening a file that already has a tab, from the file tree, Go to file, or the command palette, switches to that tab and keeps its cursor and scroll position.

Search from the command palette

From anywhere in the app, Ctrl+K opens the command palette, whose field reads Search commands, files, and projects….

• With an empty query, the palette lists your recently used commands, then up to five projects under Recent projects, then every available command under its own group.
• With a query, the palette fuzzy-matches commands, projects, and the current project’s text files into one ranked Results list.

Selecting a project switches to it. Selecting a file opens or activates its tab, exactly as Go to file does. Escape closes the palette.

Check that it worked

1. Press Ctrl+P to open Go to file.
2. Type three letters of a file name that has no tab open.
3. Press Enter to open the file in a new tab at line 1.

You should now see that file’s heading structure in the Outline, with the heading holding your cursor highlighted.

See also

• Labels, references, and navigation
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Editor overview