Add project search modal by hosin211 · Pull Request #43790 · zed-industries/zed

hosin211 · 2025-11-29T10:32:30Z

Closes #N/A

This PR adds an optional modal-based global search as an alternative to the tab-based project search.

Why: The modal provides a faster, more streamlined search experience - it opens instantly as an overlay without creating a new tab, similar to VS
Code's Cmd+P style. This is useful for quick searches where you don't need the search results to persist.

Features:

Search with options (case, word, regex, include ignored)
File include/exclude filters
Replace next / replace all
Save prompt for dirty buffers (respects autosave settings)

Controlled by search.use_modal setting (defaults to false).

Screencast

Release Notes:

Added modal-based project search with replace functionality, controlled by new search.use_modal setting

cla-bot · 2025-11-29T10:32:33Z

We require contributors to sign our Contributor License Agreement, and we don't have @hosin211 on file. You can sign our CLA at https://zed.dev/cla. Once you've signed, post a comment here that says '@cla-bot check'.

hosin211 · 2025-11-29T10:33:20Z

@cla-bot check

cla-bot · 2025-11-29T10:33:23Z

We require contributors to sign our Contributor License Agreement, and we don't have @hosin211 on file. You can sign our CLA at https://zed.dev/cla. Once you've signed, post a comment here that says '@cla-bot check'.

cla-bot · 2025-11-29T10:33:24Z

The cla-bot has been summoned, and re-checked this pull request!

hosin211 · 2025-11-29T10:34:20Z

@cla-bot check

cla-bot · 2025-11-29T10:34:24Z

The cla-bot has been summoned, and re-checked this pull request!

poeck · 2026-01-14T21:26:40Z

Love the idea of a modal search! I've been missing this since switching from neovim where I used to do a lot of fuzzy finding for jumping between files.

One concern though: based on the config option, it seems like this might replace the tab-based search entirely? I'd really prefer to have both available simultaneously.

For quick navigation, the modal is perfect. But for those long refactoring sessions where I'm doing global find-and-replace across the project (sometimes taking hours), the tab-based search is invaluable - I can work through results methodically without worrying about accidentally dismissing a modal.

Could we keep both and let users choose based on their workflow?

PoSayDone · 2026-04-03T08:08:05Z

I really hope this will be available soon

ChristopherBiscardi · 2026-04-17T03:13:30Z

I do like the overall idea here, but it would be better to support both approaches (tab-based and modal based) rather than requiring a setting to only use one or the other.

GitGlimpse895 · 2026-04-27T08:56:52Z

Hey @danilo-leal — you've been the assigned reviewer here since November with no activity. @mattermill quietly unassigned himself in February without explanation.

There's a design question that's blocking community consensus here: the current implementation uses search.use_modal as an either/or toggle, but both @poeck and @ChristopherBiscardi have raised that keeping both modes available simultaneously (e.g. separate keybindings) would be preferable. @hosin211 can't really know whether to redesign the approach without a signal from the team.

Could you weigh in on the either/or vs. coexistence question? That alone would unblock the path forward here.

…rch-modal # Conflicts: # Cargo.lock # assets/settings/default.json # crates/search/Cargo.toml

Update project_search_modal.rs after merging upstream/main: - Use theme_settings::ThemeSettings (moved out of theme crate root) - PickerDelegate::render_editor now takes Arc<dyn ErasedEditor> - SearchableItem::replace and replace_all require a SearchToken arg - project::search() returns SearchResults<SearchResult>, no longer a Stream - Handle new SearchResult variants WaitingForScan and Searching - Add ui_input dependency to crates/search/Cargo.toml Verified with cargo check -p search.

joshuafouch · 2026-06-05T23:52:57Z

please.

yara-blue · 2026-06-09T14:54:16Z

Thanks for building on Zed! we are getting close to landing a dedicated quick search modal - with optional previews - see #56037. Since it makes no senses to have two search modals we will not be going with this approach.

Once that is out (soon ™️ ) let us know if there is any use case it does not address for you and we can see how to address it.

Overhauls Zed's pickers to make them resizable and give them a preview. Closes zed-industries#8279 ### Background The most requested Zed feature has the last year has been a [Telescope like search box](zed-industries#8279) [discussion](zed-industries#22581). To understand why this is so popular we need to understand search can serve thee goals: - Navigation: fuzzy search is faster & easier then clicking in a file tree - Exploration: example, find a function by a word in its doc comment - Collecting: example, getting a list of functions to change The project search which shows results in a multibuffer is the perfect way to operate on a list of items. Navigation and Exploration need a lot of context around each result and offer fast navigation between them. For both of these live searching is also critical. The `telescope UI` is a picker with a preview to the right or below. It's offered in various editors and IDE's most famously Neovim (through the Telescope plugin), IntelliJ (natively), Helix (natively) and of course VScode (plugins) and it's _many_ forks. While having a UI like that for text search (our project search) is most requested the UX pattern is applied widely, from `find_all_references` to `bookmarks`. It enhances most pickers. Note that we have over 50 different picker modals! The community has tried to build something like this for Zed: - zed-industries#44530 - zed-industries#45307 - zed-industries#46478 - zed-industries#43790 These all became huge PR's that we could not merge for various reasons. This is a really hard feature to integrate in Zed! This PR got started as zed-industries#46478 and supercedes that. ### Design - Extend pickers to support an optional preview with minimal changes to the pickers themselves. - Make pickers resizable. - Complement the existing search do not replace it by having both UI's share the underlying search and allow freely switching between them. - Allow extending the preview to things other then files. - Maintain a clean design on all the pickers. ### Heigh level Implementation overview - Adds an `Option<Preview>` to `Picker` - Gives `PickerDelegate` a method to communicate a preview to the Picker - Overhaul the way pickers are drawn to allow for resizing them. Implemented on the `Shape` and `SizeBouds` structs. - Adds a high level way to draw the `footer` and `editor` so we do not need to change much to the pickers. - Adds a new text finder Picker - Adds a way to take a running search from project search and hand it to the text finder Picker and the other way round - Give the file finder a preview ### Next steps A more detailed list and how to help out will be added to the tracking issue for [Pickes with previews](zed-industries#56037) - Add more previews to more pickers! - Enable selectioning multiple items in pickers and performing actions on those - Open selected items in a multibuffer - Add a way to restore the last picker - Make popovers (picker attached to some menu) resizable as well ## Self-Review Checklist: - [x] I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability - [x] Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments - [x] The content adheres to Zed's UI standards ([UX/UI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#uiux-checklist) and [icon](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/crates/icons/README.md) guidelines) - [x] Tests cover the new/changed behavior - [x] Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable ## Showcase TODO (will be done post merge) --- Release Notes: - Added resizing via dragging to all picker modals. - Added a preview to the File finder, the preview can be to the right or below. - Added a Text finder picker with a preview as alternative project search UI. The search is shared and allowes switch between UIs while running. --------- Co-authored-by: ozacod <47009516+ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: ozacod <ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Danilo Leal <daniloleal09@gmail.com>

Overhauls Zed's pickers to make them resizable and give them a preview. Closes #8279 ### Background The most requested Zed feature has the last year has been a [Telescope like search box](zed-industries/zed#8279) [discussion](zed-industries/zed#22581). To understand why this is so popular we need to understand search can serve thee goals: - Navigation: fuzzy search is faster & easier then clicking in a file tree - Exploration: example, find a function by a word in its doc comment - Collecting: example, getting a list of functions to change The project search which shows results in a multibuffer is the perfect way to operate on a list of items. Navigation and Exploration need a lot of context around each result and offer fast navigation between them. For both of these live searching is also critical. The `telescope UI` is a picker with a preview to the right or below. It's offered in various editors and IDE's most famously Neovim (through the Telescope plugin), IntelliJ (natively), Helix (natively) and of course VScode (plugins) and it's _many_ forks. While having a UI like that for text search (our project search) is most requested the UX pattern is applied widely, from `find_all_references` to `bookmarks`. It enhances most pickers. Note that we have over 50 different picker modals! The community has tried to build something like this for Zed: - zed-industries/zed#44530 - zed-industries/zed#45307 - zed-industries/zed#46478 - zed-industries/zed#43790 These all became huge PR's that we could not merge for various reasons. This is a really hard feature to integrate in Zed! This PR got started as zed-industries/zed#46478 and supercedes that. ### Design - Extend pickers to support an optional preview with minimal changes to the pickers themselves. - Make pickers resizable. - Complement the existing search do not replace it by having both UI's share the underlying search and allow freely switching between them. - Allow extending the preview to things other then files. - Maintain a clean design on all the pickers. ### Heigh level Implementation overview - Adds an `Option<Preview>` to `Picker` - Gives `PickerDelegate` a method to communicate a preview to the Picker - Overhaul the way pickers are drawn to allow for resizing them. Implemented on the `Shape` and `SizeBouds` structs. - Adds a high level way to draw the `footer` and `editor` so we do not need to change much to the pickers. - Adds a new text finder Picker - Adds a way to take a running search from project search and hand it to the text finder Picker and the other way round - Give the file finder a preview ### Next steps A more detailed list and how to help out will be added to the tracking issue for [Pickes with previews](zed-industries/zed#56037) - Add more previews to more pickers! - Enable selectioning multiple items in pickers and performing actions on those - Open selected items in a multibuffer - Add a way to restore the last picker - Make popovers (picker attached to some menu) resizable as well ## Self-Review Checklist: - [x] I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability - [x] Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments - [x] The content adheres to Zed's UI standards ([UX/UI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#uiux-checklist) and [icon](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/crates/icons/README.md) guidelines) - [x] Tests cover the new/changed behavior - [x] Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable ## Showcase TODO (will be done post merge) --- Release Notes: - Added resizing via dragging to all picker modals. - Added a preview to the File finder, the preview can be to the right or below. - Added a Text finder picker with a preview as alternative project search UI. The search is shared and allowes switch between UIs while running. --------- Co-authored-by: ozacod <47009516+ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: ozacod <ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Danilo Leal <daniloleal09@gmail.com> zed-upstream: ccf4058b7a6b05207d4f1dd25106ec5fc439cc74

Overhauls Zed's pickers to make them resizable and give them a preview. Closes zed-industries#8279 ### Background The most requested Zed feature has the last year has been a [Telescope like search box](zed-industries#8279) [discussion](zed-industries#22581). To understand why this is so popular we need to understand search can serve thee goals: - Navigation: fuzzy search is faster & easier then clicking in a file tree - Exploration: example, find a function by a word in its doc comment - Collecting: example, getting a list of functions to change The project search which shows results in a multibuffer is the perfect way to operate on a list of items. Navigation and Exploration need a lot of context around each result and offer fast navigation between them. For both of these live searching is also critical. The `telescope UI` is a picker with a preview to the right or below. It's offered in various editors and IDE's most famously Neovim (through the Telescope plugin), IntelliJ (natively), Helix (natively) and of course VScode (plugins) and it's _many_ forks. While having a UI like that for text search (our project search) is most requested the UX pattern is applied widely, from `find_all_references` to `bookmarks`. It enhances most pickers. Note that we have over 50 different picker modals! The community has tried to build something like this for Zed: - zed-industries#44530 - zed-industries#45307 - zed-industries#46478 - zed-industries#43790 These all became huge PR's that we could not merge for various reasons. This is a really hard feature to integrate in Zed! This PR got started as zed-industries#46478 and supercedes that. ### Design - Extend pickers to support an optional preview with minimal changes to the pickers themselves. - Make pickers resizable. - Complement the existing search do not replace it by having both UI's share the underlying search and allow freely switching between them. - Allow extending the preview to things other then files. - Maintain a clean design on all the pickers. ### Heigh level Implementation overview - Adds an `Option<Preview>` to `Picker` - Gives `PickerDelegate` a method to communicate a preview to the Picker - Overhaul the way pickers are drawn to allow for resizing them. Implemented on the `Shape` and `SizeBouds` structs. - Adds a high level way to draw the `footer` and `editor` so we do not need to change much to the pickers. - Adds a new text finder Picker - Adds a way to take a running search from project search and hand it to the text finder Picker and the other way round - Give the file finder a preview ### Next steps A more detailed list and how to help out will be added to the tracking issue for [Pickes with previews](zed-industries#56037) - Add more previews to more pickers! - Enable selectioning multiple items in pickers and performing actions on those - Open selected items in a multibuffer - Add a way to restore the last picker - Make popovers (picker attached to some menu) resizable as well ## Self-Review Checklist: - [x] I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability - [x] Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments - [x] The content adheres to Zed's UI standards ([UX/UI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#uiux-checklist) and [icon](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/crates/icons/README.md) guidelines) - [x] Tests cover the new/changed behavior - [x] Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable ## Showcase TODO (will be done post merge) --- Release Notes: - Added resizing via dragging to all picker modals. - Added a preview to the File finder, the preview can be to the right or below. - Added a Text finder picker with a preview as alternative project search UI. The search is shared and allowes switch between UIs while running. --------- Co-authored-by: ozacod <47009516+ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: ozacod <ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Danilo Leal <daniloleal09@gmail.com>

Hussein2012 and others added 3 commits November 28, 2025 10:31

Add modal-based project search with replace functionality

4ac75bb

fix performance issues

61be215

fix replace all not working on first press

53bce9b

cla-bot Bot added the cla-signed The user has signed the Contributor License Agreement label Nov 29, 2025

SomeoneToIgnore assigned mattermill and danilo-leal Nov 29, 2025

Fix pipeline

e583f45

maxdeviant changed the title ~~Feature/project search modal~~ Add project search modal Nov 29, 2025

zelenenka added this to Quality Week – December 2025 Dec 12, 2025

github-project-automation Bot moved this to Community PRs in Quality Week – December 2025 Dec 12, 2025

SomeoneToIgnore unassigned mattermill Feb 24, 2026

This comment was marked as spam.

Sign in to view

hosin211 added 2 commits May 4, 2026 14:21

Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/main' into feature/project-sea…

a696828

…rch-modal # Conflicts: # Cargo.lock # assets/settings/default.json # crates/search/Cargo.toml

yara-blue closed this Jun 9, 2026

github-project-automation Bot moved this from Community PRs to Done in Quality Week – December 2025 Jun 9, 2026

yara-blue mentioned this pull request Jun 19, 2026

Add preview to pickers and make them resizable #59604

Merged

5 tasks

Navigation Menu

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Add project search modal - #43790

Add project search modal#43790
hosin211 wants to merge 6 commits into
zed-industries:mainfrom
hosin211:feature/project-search-modal

hosin211 commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

cla-bot Bot commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

hosin211 commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

cla-bot Bot commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

cla-bot Bot commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

hosin211 commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

cla-bot Bot commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

poeck commented Jan 14, 2026

Uh oh!

PoSayDone commented Apr 3, 2026

Uh oh!

ChristopherBiscardi commented Apr 17, 2026

Uh oh!

GitGlimpse895 commented Apr 27, 2026

Uh oh!

This comment was marked as spam.

joshuafouch commented Jun 5, 2026

Uh oh!

yara-blue commented Jun 9, 2026

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

12 participants

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Conversation

hosin211 commented Nov 29, 2025

Screencast

Uh oh!

cla-bot Bot commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

hosin211 commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

cla-bot Bot commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

cla-bot Bot commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

hosin211 commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

cla-bot Bot commented Nov 29, 2025

Uh oh!

poeck commented Jan 14, 2026

Uh oh!

PoSayDone commented Apr 3, 2026

Uh oh!

ChristopherBiscardi commented Apr 17, 2026

Uh oh!

GitGlimpse895 commented Apr 27, 2026

Uh oh!

This comment was marked as spam.

joshuafouch commented Jun 5, 2026

Uh oh!

yara-blue commented Jun 9, 2026

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

12 participants