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Search & Find

Skim gives you two ways to move to a specific piece of text: full search across the diff, and vim-style character find within a line.

Press / to enter SEARCH mode, type a query, and press Enter to jump to the first match.

Key Action
/ Enter search mode
(type) Build the query (smart-case)
Enter Execute search, jump to first match
Backspace Delete a character from the query
ESC Cancel and return to NORMAL mode

Once you’ve searched, move between matches from NORMAL mode:

Key Action
n / N Next / previous match

Search behavior:

  • Smart case: a lowercase query is case-insensitive; include any uppercase letter and the search becomes case-sensitive.
  • Searches across all files in the diff at once.
  • Matches diff content only: added, deleted, and context lines.

The vim f/t/F/T family jumps the cursor to a character on the current line.

Key Action
f{char} Find character forward, cursor lands on the character
F{char} Find character backward, cursor lands on the character
t{char} Find character forward, cursor lands before the character
T{char} Find character backward, cursor lands after the character
; Repeat the last find in the same direction

Next: visual selection.