About Find & Replace
Find & Replace swaps every occurrence of one piece of text for another, with an option to treat the search term as a regular expression instead of a literal string. It replaces all matches in one pass rather than stepping through them, so it suits cleaning up repeated values across a data extract or correcting a term throughout a document.
The default mode is literal, which is the safer choice because special characters in the search term are escaped for you. Switching to regular expression mode hands the pattern to the browser engine unchanged, which unlocks the full syntax — including grouped matches that can be reused in the replacement, so part of what was matched can be carried into what replaces it.
Two behaviours need stating because they can pass unnoticed. Matching is case-insensitive unless the case-sensitive option is ticked, so a lowercase search term will find capitalised occurrences too. And if the regular expression does not compile, the original text is returned unchanged rather than an error being shown — so when nothing appears to have happened in regex mode, check the pattern for a syntax error before assuming there was nothing to match.
How to use Find & Replace
- 1 Paste the text to search through.
- 2 Enter the text or pattern to find.
- 3 Enter the replacement, and leave it empty to delete the matches.
- 4 Tick the case-sensitive option if the search should respect capitalisation.
- 5 Tick the regular expression option only when you need pattern matching.
Frequently asked questions
It replaced nothing and showed no error. Why?
In regular expression mode an invalid pattern is left alone and the text comes back unchanged, deliberately, rather than reporting a failure. Check that the pattern compiles — an unmatched bracket or a dangling quantifier is the usual culprit.
Can I reuse part of what was matched?
Yes, in regular expression mode with a group: wrap the part you want to keep in parentheses and refer to it by its number in the replacement. That is what makes a pattern that rearranges a date format or swaps two fields possible.
Is the search case-sensitive by default?
No, it is case-insensitive by default, so a search for a lowercase word also finds capitalised occurrences. Tick the case-sensitive option when the difference matters, such as renaming an identifier that must match exactly.
Does it replace only the first match?
It replaces every match in one pass. That is the useful behaviour for bulk cleanup but worth remembering when the term appears in places you did not intend — spot-check the result rather than assuming only the target changed.
Free, online, and private
Free to use
Find & Replace is completely free. There is no account to create, no login, and no hidden charge or usage limit.
Runs online in your browser
It is a free online tool that runs entirely in your browser. Nothing to download or install — open the page and start using it right away.
Your data stays private
All processing happens locally on your device. Your input is never uploaded, stored, or tracked, so it never leaves your browser.
How Find & Replace behaves in detail
These are the specifics of this implementation — the exact ranges, defaults and fixed settings you are working with.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Replacement scope | every occurrence — the pattern is always built with the g flag, so a first-match-only mode does not exist |
| Case handling | case-insensitive by default; ticking Case sensitive is what removes the i flag |
| Literal mode | with Use regex off, the Find text is escaped for the 14 metacharacters . * + ? ^ $ { } ( ) | [ ] \ before matching |
| Regex mode | with Use regex on, the Find text goes to new RegExp unescaped, with flags fixed to g plus i unless Case sensitive is ticked |
| Invalid pattern | the input is returned unchanged — no error message and no partial replacement |
| Empty Find | the input is passed through unchanged rather than matching at every position |
Compiled from the implementation of this tool and checked against it by itoolnet.
What Find & Replace does not do
Knowing the edges of a tool saves more time than another list of its features. These are the cases where it will not do what you might expect.
- The flags are hard-coded to g, plus i when Case sensitive is unticked. There is no way to add the multiline or dotAll flags, so ^ and $ never match at line boundaries and a dot never matches across a line break however the pattern is written, and Unicode property escapes such as \p{L} cannot be used at all without the u flag.
- The replacement text is not inserted literally. It is processed for substitution syntax, so $& expands to the whole match, $$ collapses to one dollar sign and $` and $' expand to the text before and after the match, which means those sequences cannot be typed into the Replace with box as written.
- A malformed pattern is swallowed silently. The catch returns the input unchanged, which looks exactly like a pattern that matched nothing, so a broken regular expression reads as "no results" rather than as an error — and the output reports no count of how many replacements were made.
Tested and documented by itoolnet, the team that builds and maintains this site.