computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, incremental search, also known as hot search, incremental find or real-time suggestions, is a

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

interaction method to progressively search for and filter through text. As the user types text, one or more possible matches for the text are found and immediately presented to the user. This immediate feedback often allows the user to stop short of typing the entire word or phrase they were looking for. The user may also choose a closely related option from the presented list. The method of incremental search is sometimes distinguished from user interfaces that employ a modal window, such as a

dialog box In computing, a dialog box (also simply dialog) is a graphical control element in the form of a small window that communicates information to the user and prompts them for a response. Dialog boxes are classified as " modal" or "modeless", dep ...

, to enter searches. For some applications, a separate user interface mode may be used instead of a dialog box.

History

The first documented use of incremental search was in

EMACS Emacs (), originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor Macros"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...

on ITS in the late 1970s. This was one of the many essential Emacs features Richard Stallman included in his reimplementation,

GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a text editor and suite of free software tools. Its development began in 1984 by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU ...

. Other noteworthy programs containing this functionality in the 1980s include bash and Canon Cat. These early implementations offered single line feedback, not lists of suggestions. The first mainstream appearance may have been in the Speller for WordPerfect 5.2 for Windows, released 30 November 1992. As programmer Robert John Stevens, now CEO of WriteExpress, watched users at the WordPerfect Usability Lab in Orem, Utah use the 5.1 Speller that he and Steven M. Cannon ported to Windows, he noticed that when a word was not found in the dictionary and no alternative words were presented, users seemed lost, moved the mouse cursor around the page and even exited the Speller. Dumbstruck by the anomaly, he went home, sat on the couch, and discussed his observations with his wife. Stevens coded the solution: as a user typed in the edit box, Speller would suggest words beginning with the letters entered. "You can type in the Replace With box any word you want to find. As you type letters into the box, possible matches are displayed."

Variants

This feature, or variations thereof, has also been referred to as

Autocomplete Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application software, application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android (operating system), Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical us ...

, search as you type, filter/find as you type (FAYT), incremental search, typeahead search, inline search, instant search, word wheeling, and other names as well. Some common

keyboard shortcut In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...

s for incremental find are Ctrl/Cmd-F (like for traditional find), F3, the GNU-style / (also applicable to Vim), or

Emacs Emacs (), originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor Macros"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...

-style C-s.

Searches for files and media

This user interface method is also employed in varying contexts. For example, a user may encounter this feature while searching for files whose names match a string in an operating system's file explorer shell. The feature may also be used during searches for songs whose name or artist match a string in a media player.

Searches for user interface elements

Another variation is to filter through long lists of options or menu items that may appear within the user interface itself. Examples of this variation can be found in the about:config interface section of Mozilla Firefox version 2.0.0.14 and later versions; and in the bundle editor section of TextMate 1.5.7. This feature is also employed in application launchers such as Quicksilver 1.0. Typically a list of matches is generated as the search query is typed, and the list is progressively narrowed to match the filter text.

Web search

In September 2010, Google introduced Google Instant, an incremental search feature for Google Search.

Resource consumption

Incremental search on a non-local server, as in Web search, uses more network bandwidth and server processing than non-incremental search, due to the handling of XMLHttpRequests (or similar) which are typically fired from each onkeyup event.

Reception

Interface expert Jef Raskin has been a strong advocate of incremental search. In his 2000 book '' The Humane Interface'', he wrote, "From the point of view of interface engineering, the advantages of incremental searching are so numerous and the advantages of delimited searches so few that I can see almost no occasions when a delimited search would be preferred." This was followed by a footnote reading, "A search is either incremental or excremental." Incremental search has been criticised for exhibiting low affordance, as the text fields which provide it offer no visual indication of that fact until after the user begins typing.

Specific applications

Non-modal incremental find is found in: Modern

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

s: *

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

(since version 0.4) *

Opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

* Opera Mini *

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

* Chrome * Internet Explorer 8 * Konqueror * Midori Instant messaging clients: * Adium * Windows Live Messenger Modern

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s: *

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

: Spotlight (which searches the entire computer) : Help menu ( 10.5 and newer) : System Preferences *

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and 7 : Start menu : Control Panel *

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

's KDE 4 desktop environment uses this systematically : KWrite : Rekonq * BlackBerry OS (version 6.0.0 and newer) Editors and development environments: * Eclipse *

* IntelliJ IDEA * NetBeans IDE * Sublime Text * Vim * Visual Studio Other applications: *

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

* Google Toolbar 5 * less *

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

* Quicksilver * Blender's search menu (version 2.5 and newer) * Clara.io's explorer search menu