Please make it so that the search function in the file explorer descends into closed folders

[scott-parkhill]

Currently, when you use ctrl+f to search for files in your project, it will only match files that are currently visually visible, i.e. in folders that are not collapsed. But if you collapse a folder and try to search for a file, it comes up empty. I want the search feature to, when enter is pressed, recursively descend into the folders and open them up to the point of any matches.

It's currently super frustrating because I want ctrl+f in the explorer to work and try it so much and it just returns nothing. Then what I end up doing is going to the terminal and doing find . -name <filename>, then manually go through the relevant directories and open them up and find the file I want to open. The explorer's ctrl+f should do this for you.

[IllusionMH]

/duplicate of #66971

[VSCodeTriageBot]

Thanks for creating this issue! We figured it's covering the same as another one we already have. Thus, we closed this one as a duplicate. You can search for similar existing issues. See also our issue reporting guidelines.

Happy Coding!

[scott-parkhill]

@IllusionMH I did look at that issue, and I could be wrong but it doesn't really seem like a duplicate. That person seems to be talking about the filtering functionality not working accordingly, while the behaviour and feature I described has nothing to do specifically with the filtering capability but with the search function in its entirety. In fact, that linked issue is rather confusing, I'm not entirely sure what that poster is getting at.

[IllusionMH]

Ctrl+F in File Explorer (from your description I assume that you are talking about this view) and in lists(trees) in general is substitute for "filter as you type" feature that basically had two modes highlight matches and navigate them with ↑/↓ or hide anything that doesn't (fuzzy)match typed string.

So replacing filter as you type with explicit search widget don't resolve root cause - to find all matching tree items you need to resolve(expand) everything recursively which is ultimately requested in #66971 (and I agree that that's issue has really long description) which is tracking issue for this kind of requests.

[scott-parkhill]

Okay, thank you for the clarification!