Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2022 17.9 Preview 3, which provides significant improvements to the platform’s built-in code discovery capabilities. The update allows users to perform comprehensive searches in Visual Studio, including searches for local variable names, comments, parameter names, and various string types.

Users can now enjoy advanced search features and improved plain text browsing

To take advantage of these improvements, users can make coding easier and more efficient by using familiar keyboard shortcuts like Find in Files (Ctrl + Shift + F) and Quick Find (Ctrl + F).

One of the key features highlighted in the release is an update to the original default code search functionality (Ctrl + T or Ctrl +). Microsoft has implemented “full-text matching”, which allows users to obtain search results for items such as comments and local variables that were not available in the previous version. This improvement aims to improve performance by providing more accurate and relevant search results for developers navigating a large code base.

In addition to updated code search features, Microsoft also introduced plain text improvements. Users can now access features such as Case Matching, Exact Word Matching, and Use Regular Expressions using the buttons on the right side of the search bar.

Improved plain text mode allows users to apply filters, limiting results to text-related results only. This flexibility allows developers to tailor their searches based on specific criteria, improving the accuracy of search results.

The updated code search feature has been tested since Visual Studio 2022 17.9 Preview 2 and is now fully available in Preview 3, the press release states. However, Microsoft says some features “may not be installed by default in pre-release channel rendering”. Users who will not notice these changes immediately must manually enable the preview feature in preferences to fully experience the advanced code search features introduced in Visual Studio 2022 17.9 Preview 3.