searchable code actions

[andrewbanchich]

Check for existing issues

• Completed

Describe the feature

one thing i miss from emacs is searchable code actions. e.g. i'd like to select Code Actions and then immediately start typing and it performing a fuzzy search on the options.

Zed Version and System Specs

Zed: v0.170.1 (Zed)
OS: Linux Wayland ubuntu 24.04
Memory: 31 GiB
Architecture: x86_64
GPU: Intel(R) Graphics (RPL-U) || Intel open-source Mesa driver || Mesa 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.3

If applicable, add mockups / screenshots to help present your vision of the feature

No response

[notpeter]

So basically you're looking for a way to filter context menu popovers by typing a substring and have it filter the results? Can you provide an example mock of what you envision for how this would look? Would this be available just in Code Actions or are there others it makes sense to you? I imagine the text entry box would be hidden until you started typing but the then modal would expand? Or would it always show.

This would likely require some gpui component changes, but I like the idea of making arbitrary menus more navigable via keyboard.

[niclas-j]

@notpeter Coming from Neovim I am also missing this.

I can type the index of the suggestion so have it marked or I can start typing and it matches the suggestions. This makes it way easier to select a Code Action.

Lets take Zed for an example:

I would expect starting to type "O" for example that "Organize imports" gets selected / the list filtered by my search term.

[failable]

@notpeter

Exactly! One of the most important features and "philosophies" in Emacs is that: since everything is text, everything becomes searchable and filterable. In many scenarios, using search + filtering is more efficient than using keyboard shortcuts. This is especially true for interactive searching.

Candidates from different searchers have different default actions: For searching, the default action is generally 'go to the target'. For code action, the default action is 'apply the code action'. For commits, the default action is 'open diff', etc.

Search for code action

Search for lints

Search for headings (Outline in Zed)

Search for lines in current buffer

Search commits

Project search (interactively)

I imagine the text entry box would be hidden until you started typing but the then modal would expand? Or would it always show.

I'm not sure how to achieve this in Zed. In Emacs, there's a very natural way to do this: the unified minibuffer serves as a prompt to get user input. It would be nice to have a unified GUI way to search and filter stuffs in Zed for file_finder, tab_switcher, etc.

[andrewbanchich]

Thanks @failable!

It would be awesome if Zed could also take the "everything is text" approach. I'd love to see that philosophy put to use here, too.

[1925381584]

There are many valuable treasures in emacs, waiting for zed to explore.