Find and Replace

1. 1Paste or load the text.
2. 2Type the word or phrase to find, and what to replace it with.
3. 3Tick Match case, Whole words only or Use regular expressions as needed.
4. 4Check the replacement count, then copy or download the result.

In plain mode the search text is matched literally — dots, brackets and dollar signs mean themselves — and the replacement is inserted exactly as typed. Every occurrence is replaced in one pass, so replacing “a” with “aa” cannot loop.

Whole words only means the match may not have a letter, digit or underscore directly before or after it, in any alphabet, so “cat” matches in “the cat sat” but not in “concat” or “cats”.

With regular expressions on, the find box takes JavaScript regex syntax and the replacement understands $1, $2 and $<name> for groups and $& for the whole match. ^ and $ match at the start and end of each line unless you untick that option.

Searching runs in a background worker and is stopped after 1.5 seconds, so a regular expression that backtracks badly cannot freeze the page.

Your text is processed by JavaScript running in this page and is never sent over the network. That matters when you are pasting a draft, a client brief, meeting notes or anything else you would rather not hand to a server.

Replace “colour” with “color”, whole words only, case-insensitive

1. Text: Colour charts and watercolour paints
2. “Colour” matches; “watercolour” does not, because a letter comes before it
3. Result: color charts and watercolour paints

Result: 1 replacement. With Whole words off, both would change.

• Use Whole words only for names and short words so you do not change parts of longer words.
• Check the replacement count before copying — a count far higher than expected means the search is too broad.
• In regex mode, escape special characters such as . ? ( with a backslash to match them literally.
• Keep the original text until you have checked the result.