Obsidian/Q/What do the official Obsidian docs say about find and replace?

• What do the official Obsidian docs say about find and replace?

  • AI Answer

    • Answer/Official from Obsidian Help, read at obsidianmd/obsidian-help c86dd8fe (2026-05-29).
    • Short answer: the prose documentation never covers find and replace. Every official statement about it lives in the release notes, and those confirm ⌘ ⌥ F as the macOS default — so the shortcut recorded on Obsidian/Keyshort/Open Search Replace is the right one.

    • What the prose docs cover

      • Search is the vault-wide core plugin on ⌘ ⇧ F. It is read-only: operators, regex, properties, sort order, embedding results — no replace anywhere on the page.
      • Editing shortcuts lists only the shortcuts the OS and the editor framework provide. No find, no replace.
      • Hotkeys explains how to view, set, and remove bindings, and does not list defaults.

    • What the release notes say

      • v0.6.0 — "You can now search AND replace, Ctrl+H by default."
      • v0.10.1 — "Search and replace now has a new default hotkey on macOS Cmd+Option+F to avoid clashing with the native hotkey for hide window." This is the origin of ⌘ ⌥ F, and the reason it is not ⌘ H.
      • v0.13.18 — in-document search gained Search All (Alt+Enter) and Replace All (⌘ ⌥ Enter).
      • v0.13.27 — fixed ⌘ G in document search.
      • v0.13.30 — fixed search and replace commands not working when search is already open.
      • v1.8.2 — the "Search current file" bar began showing the total number of results.

    • When the shortcut does nothing

      • The commands are named Search current file and Search & replace in current file. Open the command palette and run the replace one by name; if it works from the palette, the binding is the problem rather than the feature.
      • Replace acts on an editor. In Reading view there is nothing to replace into.
      • In Settings → Hotkeys, filter for replace and confirm nothing else has taken ⌘ ⌥ F. A community plugin claiming the same combination wins silently.
      • macOS itself, or another running app, can swallow ⌘ ⌥ F before Obsidian sees the keystroke.