tilmac find buffer

Most text based apps on the Mac have a find buffer accessed with ⌘F. A common workflow is to select some text, copy it with ⌘C, open find with ⌘F, paste the searched text with ⌘V, hit return to find the next instance, and hit return multiple times until you find the instance you’re looking for, then hit escape to close the find overlay.

There’s a faster way.

After selecting text, press ⌘E to fill that text into the find buffer. It may look like nothing happened, but now press ⌘G to find the next instance of that text (⌘⇧G to find the previous). Continue pressing ⌘G until you find the instance you’re looking for.

This has a benefit of not changing modes; your cursor remains within the text document rather than being caught by the find input.

This works in Safari, Chrome, TextEdit, Notes, VSCode, Terminal (but not iTerm), and most other places you work with text in macOS.