Find things fast (the global search bar)¶
Understand has one place to search for almost anything: the global search bar at the top of the window. Type a query and it looks across your program's entities, file names, file contents, menu commands, settings, help, and more — grouping the best matches under a heading for each category.
Open the search bar¶
Press F2 to focus the search bar. It lives in its own toolbar across the top of the main window (the placeholder reads “Looking for something? Start here”). Press Esc to clear the query or close the results popup.
Start typing and results appear as you go, grouped by category with the top few matches under each heading. Press Enter to jump to the first result, use the arrow keys to pick another, or click a category heading (View All) to see every match in that category.
Search categories (scopes)¶
By default the bar searches everything at once. To limit a search to one category, begin your query with that category's prefix character:
| Category | Prefix | Searches |
|---|---|---|
| Entities | $ |
Program symbols — functions, classes, variables, etc. Jump straight to a definition. |
| File Names | / |
Files in the project by name (\ on Windows — it's the path separator). |
| File Contents | % |
Full-text search of file contents (the indexed "Instant Search"). |
| Commands | > |
Menu actions and other commands — a command palette. |
| Settings | & |
Options and preferences. |
| Help | # |
Help topics. |
| Plugins | + |
Installed plugins. |
| Recents | - |
Recently opened files and projects. |
| CodeCheck | @ |
CodeCheck checks. |
| AI Code Search | ^ |
Semantic (natural-language) code search. Available when the AI features are set up. |
You don't have to memorize the prefixes
Leave the bar empty and each category shows a heading with its prefix (for example
“Go to Entity: $”). Type without a prefix to search across all categories, then click a
heading to focus one.
Examples¶
| Goal | Type |
|---|---|
| Jump to a function or class | $parseFile |
| Open a file by name | /main.cpp |
| Find where text appears in the code | %TODO: refactor |
| Run a menu command | >Find In Files |
| Change a setting | &font |
Pressing Enter on a File Contents query opens the full match list in the Search Results window, so you can step through every hit.
Wrong or stale content results?
File-contents search answers from a background index, not a live scan. If those results look incomplete or out of date, reset the index — see Search results are wrong or stale.
When to use the dedicated tools instead¶
The global bar is for jumping to a result quickly. Two long-standing tools remain for heavier, structured searches:
- Find In Files (
F5) / Replace In Files (F6) — from the Search menu — text, wildcard, or regular-expression search (and multi-file replace) scoped to files, directories, or architectures, with results in the Find in Files window. Use this when you need regex, replace, or scoped text search rather than a quick jump. The global bar's File Contents category covers the fast case. - Entity Locator (View → Entity Locator, or Search → Find Entity) — a filterable table of entities you can narrow by name, kind, declaring file, or metric columns (for example, the most complex functions). Use this to browse and filter many entities; use the bar's Entities category to jump to one.
Once you've landed somewhere, Browse Mode turns the surrounding source into links, and the Contextual Information window keeps the file's structure and your current scope in view as you move.