Find in Note

Find in Note

Search the note you are reading and see every match light up in place — without the note changing shape underneath you.

Why

Obsidian's built-in Cmd+F lives inside the editor. To put a highlight on a match, the editor has to expose the raw Markdown of whatever block the match sits in. In a note with a wide table that means the rendered table collapses into a wall of pipes and long lines running off the side of the screen, and the thing you were looking at is gone.

This plugin searches the rendered note instead, and paints matches with the CSS Custom Highlight API — which colours ranges without touching a single DOM node. Nothing re-renders, nothing reflows, the table stays a table.

What it does

• Cmd+F (Ctrl+F) opens a small bar in the top right of the note.
• Every match is highlighted as you type; the current one is highlighted stronger.
• Enter / Shift+Enter step forward and back. So do the two arrows in the bar.
• The note scrolls only when the current match is off screen.
• Esc closes the bar and clears the highlights.
• Matching is case-insensitive and literal, so C++ and (x) search for themselves rather than blowing up as patterns.

Opened while editing, the note switches to reading view for the search and switches back to exactly the mode it was in when the bar closes.

One-time setup: freeing Cmd+F

Obsidian's built-in search holds Cmd+F and does not let go — a plugin cannot take the key from underneath it, and trying only produces two search bars. Clear the built-in binding once:

Settings → Hotkeys. Click the keyboard icon next to the filter box and press Cmd+F: the list narrows to whatever currently owns that shortcut. Remove the binding from the built-in search command, and the one this plugin ships with (Find in Note: Search the open note) takes over.

The plugin says this once, in a notice on first load, and then never again. It does not edit your hotkey settings for you — that file is yours.

Until then the plugin is still fully usable from the command palette (Cmd+P → Search the open note).

Mobile

The plugin uses no desktop-only APIs, and the mobile case is built for rather than merely allowed:

• The bar shrinks to the width it is given instead of running off the edge — the same rule that fixes a narrow side pane on the desktop.
• Buttons get finger-sized targets, and the field is set at 16px so iOS does not zoom the page the moment it is focused.
• Autocapitalise and autocorrect are off, so the phone stops turning the query into a different word.
• The hotkey notice is desktop-only. There is no shortcut to argue over on a phone, so nothing is said; the command palette is the way in.

Highlighting still depends on the CSS Custom Highlight API being present in the device's web engine. Where it is missing, the plugin says so rather than failing quietly.

Honest limit: this has not been run on a physical phone. The code paths above are deliberate, not incidental, but a real device test is still owed.

Installing

Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Find in Note, install and enable it. Then free Cmd+F as described above — the plugin works from the command palette until you do.

1. Download main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Put them in <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/find-in-note/.
3. Enable Find in Note in Settings → Community plugins.

A copy installed this way does not update itself.

Known ceiling

Reading view renders long notes in pieces as they scroll into sight, so matches in a part of the note that has not been rendered yet are not counted at first. The plugin watches the note and re-counts as more of it arrives, so the number in the bar settles as you scroll. For a note that fits in a screen or three this is invisible; on a very long note the total may climb for a moment.

Lifting this would mean forcing the whole note to render up front, which costs more than it buys on the notes this was written for.

Development

Requires Node 20 or newer.

npm install
npm run dev            # watch build
npm run check          # the tests (Vitest)
npm run lint           # Biome: formatting and general lint
npm run lint:obsidian  # the Obsidian plugin review rules
npm run build          # lint + typecheck + tests + production bundle

npm run check runs without a browser: the tests cover the logic that does not need Obsidian — where a match lands in the text, how it is placed on the page's text nodes, building the highlight layer, and opening one search at a time.

License

MIT