Debug Console should support find

[gregg-miskelly]

• VSCode Version: 0.10.10
• OS Version: Ubuntu 14.04

This goes along with a few other debug console feature requests that I see (ex: #3974), but it would also be nice if find worked in the debug console.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Start debugging something, have the console be full of text
2. Hit Ctrl-F to find

Result: Find works in the editor window instead of the debug console

[sergiogarciadev]

The Ctrl+A also selects all text on the editor windows instead of the debug console.

[GregRos]

Is there any status on this? It seems like a really basic feature. Every other editor in existence has it I think. There is even search in the terminal, which I'd think would be harder to implement.

[kevinsalerno]

Can we get this please? VSCode is brilliant, but debugging in-editor is 1/10 for this lack of select all and/or find in debug console

[GregRos]

@kevinsalerno You can use Select All. Right click and pick "Copy All". However, you still can't use Ctrl+A.

[ChristosChristofidis]

But even if you right click copy all you will be missing the lines (ie. main.js:323)

[ncannasse]

Big up for this, having to search through debug logs requires manual copy/pasting right now, not very optimal...

[GregRos]

@ncannasse Exactly my experience. In my project I have a lot of debug logs...

[dafeldib]

Hi, definitely need this added to help with many development tasks.

[mattwelke]

Would like this too. I know some people redirect their debug output to the terminal and work there, but I don't like doing this. I prefer to keep my debug console for my debugging and my terminal for my terminal stuff. Would like to see Find support in the debug console.

[FelDev]

@Welkie redirecting the debug output to the terminal sounds like the way to go for now.
Any tip on how to do that?

[mattwelke]

@mesieu You can use the property "console": "integratedTerminal" on the debug launch task to redirect the output to the terminal.

[MaadhavShah]

This is honestly essential, idk why it's not implemented yet

[AppnovaHub]

I'd like to add this as the only feature I've ever requested because it's frankly bizarre that it's not there, it's one of those basic things, not a fancy thing, I think.

[mattwelke]

@snapcorp I bet the reason it hasn't been implemented yet is because a lot of the developers I encounter set the debugger to output into the integrated terminal instead. I seem to be the only one I know who chooses to keep it in the internal console. This is probably a Node dev thing, because the popular logging libraries choose to log to stdout instead of the console (which is a good idea of course, it's more performant), but VS Code by default will only show console output in the internal console.

[djankey]

The year is 2022 Is there any progress or update on this issue?

It is so requested and necessary to have the possibility to perform a search in the Console Log, it is strange that this ability is not available until today. There is only the filter option. I need to make a find search without filtering.

Unbelievable. It's the end of the year 2022, and this feature is still not implemented.
Even XCode has this :(

[bvoq]

+1
By clicking inside the text of a single log and then pressing Cmd+F immediately, I'm able to get this search view, but it's buggy and doesn't display search results.

[roblourens]

Thanks for pointing that out @bvoq, that's not supposed to show up, and isn't implemented to work properly here yet 😅

[seryte]

I need "find" not "filter". I want to see the context of the keyword, not the keyword itself!

[holland-hng]

nothing has changed since 2016

[erabti]

Any updates?

[ride4sun]

It is hard to believe this does not get attention from the VS Code team. Is this not a low-hanging fruit that would get an immediate better user experience? This is what we fix in my project first.

[jmonroynieto]

I'm working on a TUI with lots of events that repeat during the rendering process. Yet another example where this filter is an insufficient solution.

Alternative ui/ux would be to double click to disable filter(temporarily), jump to line and put a highlight on it. Pressing escape takes you back to the filtered results. Since each little result box seems to be a separate element, finding the element itself seems like a viable solution.

[jmonroynieto]

I just checked into it, and the list_id is recalculated when filtering even though it's a string. ~sigh

[Stitch-Taotao]

OMG,is this feature so complex to implement ？

[marctan]

still not implemented wtf?? we need find not filter!

[gjsjohnmurray]

@roblourens should this be tagged as debug-console too? It used to be until @isidorn removed that tag on Dec 15, 2020.

[kyrosle]

right now is 2023/10/26, vscode still not support find in debug console?

[holland-hng]

right now is 2023/10/26, vscode still not support find in debug console?
That's right, not only that, they also react with dislikes to questions about this issue

[bersbersbers]

they also react with dislikes to questions about this issue

To "their" defense, this is not "them" - this is me. (And I am not affiliated with Microsoft or VS Code.)

Since you mentioned it: I routinely dislike comments that contribute nothing substantial in issues with hundreds of subscribers. I do that to give feedback to the respective authors, hoping they get the point without having to trigger notifications for everyone else. Remember that you are essentially emailing hundreds of foreigners across the world as you post here.

Upvote the issue to express your support. However, stay humble and keep in mind that, very likely, your vote is not more important than that of the other 168 voters before you.

(After posting, the GitHub app showed me my comment three times, as if I had posted it three times. If that has indeed happened, it's kind of ironic in a post talking about avoiding notifications - apologies nonetheless!)

[yasinarik]

Top of my vscode needed-features list. This is fundamental.

[kyrosle]

sorry that, my word my cause some bad dispute, i am a newbie programer, for this topic, i think we can track the debug console event and filiter out the ouput event, and then put them into the webview editor view, this is the project i start to trying : https://github.com/kyrosle/develop-kit, hoping it can provide new ideas

[kayces]

It's 2024, and it's astonishingly unbelievable that VS Code still doesn't support a search function in the debugging console. As someone working in client-side development, I find this particularly frustrating. The logs that I need to monitor are constantly getting buried under a deluge of logs from various third-party SDKs. The existing filter functionality is far from sufficient - it only shows the exact matching line, completely stripping away the context provided by preceding and following lines. This makes it virtually impossible to effectively track down and understand the issues at hand. For a modern IDE that's widely used in the development community, this lack of a basic but crucial feature is a significant oversight and a major hindrance to productivity.

[gjsjohnmurray]

I just published https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=georgejames.searchable-debug-console that may serve as a workaround.