Find & Replace Text Online — With Match Case and Regex

What is a Find and Replace Tool?

A Find & Replace tool (फ़ाइंड एंड रिप्लेस) searches a text for a word, phrase or pattern and replaces every occurrence in one go. Word processors have this feature, but often you are working with text outside them — content copied from a website, a list exported from a spreadsheet, a block of code, an email template, a product feed or an SMS draft. Pasting it here lets you make bulk changes instantly, see exactly what will change, and copy the result back.

This free tool offers three levels of power. Plain mode replaces exactly what you type. Whole words only makes sure you change complete words and not parts of other words. Regular expressions let you match patterns — any phone number, any date, double spaces, the start of every line — and rearrange them with captured groups. Every match is highlighted before you commit, the original stays untouched until you apply the change, and a background time limit means even a badly written regex can never freeze your browser.

Key Features

• Replace all matches in one step, with a live count.
• Highlighted preview of every match (up to 2,000 highlighted).
• Match case for exact capitalisation.
• Whole words only with Unicode-aware boundaries for any language.
• Regular expressions with $1, $2 and $& in replacements.
• Multiline anchors so ^ and $ work on each line.
• Apply and undo with 20 steps of history.
• Safe regex execution in a Web Worker with a 2-second limit.
• Private — no text leaves your device.

How to Find and Replace — Step by Step

1. Paste your text into the first box.
2. Type what to find and what to replace it with. Leave Replace empty to delete the matches.
3. Choose options: Match case, Whole words only, Regular expression, Multiline.
4. Check the highlights and the match count.
5. Copy or download the result — or press Apply to text to make it your new working text and continue with more replacements. Use Undo to step back.

Plain, Whole-Word and Case Options

In plain mode the tool escapes every special character for you, so searching for “$5.00 (approx)” finds exactly that text. Matching ignores capital letters unless you tick Match case. Whole words only requires the match to be surrounded by non-letter, non-digit characters, so replacing “art” will not damage “start” or “artist”. Because word boundaries are based on Unicode letter categories, this works for Hindi, accented European languages and other scripts — unlike the traditional \b boundary, which only understands English letters.

Regular Expressions Made Practical

A regular expression (regex) describes a pattern instead of fixed text. Tick Regular expression and the find box accepts JavaScript regex syntax. Useful building blocks:

Ready-to-Use Recipes

Why Regex Can Freeze Pages — and How This Tool Prevents It

Some regular expressions can take an astronomically long time on certain inputs, a problem known as catastrophic backtracking. A classic example is (a+)+$ tested against a long run of “a” characters followed by another letter: the regex engine tries an exponential number of ways to split the text. On most websites that would lock up the browser tab. This tool runs your regex inside a separate Web Worker. If it has not finished within two seconds, the worker is terminated and you see a clear message instead of a frozen page. Your pattern is only ever compiled as a regular expression — it is never executed as program code.

Worked Example

The sample text on this page contains the word “example” four times — in two email addresses, in a domain name and in a company name. With the default settings (case-insensitive, plain mode), finding example and replacing it with promptminds reports 4 matches and produces “info@promptminds.com”, “sales@promptminds.com”, “promptminds.com” and “promptminds Pvt Ltd”. Tick Match case and only the three lower-case occurrences change, leaving “Example Pvt Ltd” untouched — a quick way to see how much the options matter.

Doing Several Replacements in a Row

Real clean-ups usually need more than one change. Make the first replacement, check the result and press Apply to text. The result becomes your working text, and you can type the next find and replace. Each Apply is saved in the history, so Undo takes you back one step at a time — up to 20 steps. When everything is right, copy or download the final text. This is often faster than writing one complicated regex that does everything at once, and much easier to check.

Replacing Hindi and Other Languages

Plain and whole-word replacement work with any script. You can replace “कृपया” with “प्लीज़”, fix a common spelling such as “हिन्दी” → “हिंदी”, or swap “₹” for “Rs.” across a price list. Matching is done on the exact characters you type, and case options simply have no effect on scripts like Devanagari that have no capital letters. If a Hindi word looks identical but is not found, it may be typed with a different combination of characters (for example with a nukta or a different form of anusvara); copy the word from the text itself into the Find box to be sure.

Everyday Uses

• Updating a company, product or person's name throughout a document.
• Fixing a repeated typo in a long article.
• Changing URLs or domains in a list of links.
• Cleaning exported data — extra spaces, stray symbols, inconsistent formats.
• Reformatting dates, phone numbers and codes.
• Preparing lists for CSV, SQL or code with prefixes, suffixes and separators.
• Personalising template text by replacing placeholders like {name}.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Replacing short words without Whole words — replacing “is” would also change “this” and “island”.
• Forgetting regex special characters — in regex mode, . matches any character; write \. for a real full stop.
• Greedy patterns — “.*” can swallow far more than intended; use “.*?”.
• Applying without checking — always glance at the highlighted matches first.
• Expecting \b to work for Hindi — use the Whole words option instead.

Troubleshooting

• “Invalid pattern” — the regex has a syntax error, such as an unclosed bracket; the message explains it.
• “No matches found” — check Match case, Whole words and spelling; try plain mode first.
• “Took too long” — simplify nested repeats like (x+)+ or (.*)*.
• $1 appears literally — $1 only works in regex mode with a captured group in the pattern.
• Undo says nothing to undo — Undo only reverses changes made with Apply to text; the Result box itself never changes your original.

Quick Glossary

• Regex: a regular expression, a pattern describing text.
• Capture group: part of a pattern in brackets, reusable as $1, $2.
• Anchor: ^ or $, matching a position rather than characters.
• Flag: a setting that changes regex behaviour, such as case-insensitive or multiline.
• Catastrophic backtracking: extremely slow matching caused by ambiguous nested repeats.
• Web Worker: a background thread in the browser that can be stopped without affecting the page.
• Escaping: adding a backslash so a special character like . or ? is matched literally.

Why Use This Find & Replace Tool?

It is simple for everyday replacements and powerful for patterns, shows you every match before you commit, keeps an undo history, handles any language with proper whole-word matching and protects your browser from runaway regexes — free and private.

Find & Replace — Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

Explore More Prompt Minds Tools

Find & Replace works great alongside our other free tools. Every Prompt Minds tool runs entirely in your browser — no sign-up, no uploads, no watermarks. Browse all free tools.