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The find bar

The find bar is a search box built into the editor's tab row (next to the Code, Costumes, and Sounds tabs). It jumps you straight to a block, variable, custom block, costume, or sound in the current sprite, which makes navigating large projects far quicker than scrolling.

Opening it

Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on macOS) to focus the find bar, or click it. On narrow windows it collapses to a magnifier icon that expands when clicked. The find bar is available on the Code, Costumes, and Sounds tabs.

What it finds

On the Code tab, typing filters a dropdown of matches in the current sprite or stage:

  • Hat blocks: when green flag clicked, when I receive, broadcasts, clone starts, and other event hats.
  • Custom block definitions.
  • Ordinary blocks, matched by name or by the text in their inputs.
  • Variables and lists (both global and per-sprite, labelled accordingly).

On the Costumes and Sounds tabs, it searches the names of that sprite's costumes or sounds and jumps the list to your pick.

  • Arrow Up / Down move through the dropdown; Enter goes to the next match.
  • F3 and Shift+F3 step forward and back through matches.
  • Escape clears the search, then closes the bar.
  • Selecting a result scrolls the workspace to that block so it is in view.

When a match appears in several places (a variable used many times, or a custom block with several callers), a small carousel shows current / total with arrows; cycle through each occurrence with the left/right arrows and the workspace scrolls to each in turn.

You can toggle case-sensitive matching (the Aa button) and regular expression matching (the .* button). Shift-clicking or middle-clicking a block in the workspace opens the find bar focused on that block's variable, custom block, or broadcast, as a reverse lookup.

See also