Find Certain List Items
Find and print items that interest you. Runs entirely in your browser, so your data never leaves your device.
0 chars · 0 lines
Output
The result appears here as you type.
How to use Find Certain List Items
- 1. Paste your list. Enter your items into the input pane, one per line. Any list you need to narrow down to just the entries you care about works here.
- 2. Describe what to keep. Type the text you are interested in under Items that contain. Turn on Treat the pattern as a regular expression for pattern matching beyond a plain substring search.
- 3. Set case sensitivity. Turn on Case-sensitive matching if uppercase and lowercase letters should be treated as different when checking for a match, rather than being treated the same.
- 4. Copy the found items. The output pane lists only the items matching what you described. Copy the shortlist wherever you need just those specific entries.
When to use Find Certain List Items
Find Certain List Items pulls out the specific entries you care about from a longer list, based on a piece of text or pattern. Use Find Certain List Items whenever a list is too long to scan by eye for the entries that matter to you.
- Locating every mention of a specific animal in a species list. A pasted list of species names, like 'cat', 'dog' and 'catfish', needs to be searched for everything containing 'cat', which finds both direct and partial matches.
- Finding entries tied to a specific project code. A list of ticket titles from several projects needs to be reduced to just the ones mentioning a particular project code, without manually scanning every line.
- Pulling out rows with a particular status keyword. A list of task descriptions includes a status word like 'blocked' scattered throughout, and finding items containing that word surfaces just the blocked tasks.
- Matching exact case for a specific identifier. A list of variable names has both 'Id' and 'id' used differently, and turning on case-sensitive matching lets you find only the entries using the exact capitalization you need.
Examples
Find items containing "cat"
Input
cat dog catfish
Output
cat catfish
About the Find Certain List Items tool
Find Certain List Items runs as plain JavaScript in your browser tab, with no server behind it. Find and print items that interest you. Whatever you put in stays on your device from start to finish.
The tool is part of EditSafely's List Tools section, 114 single-purpose utilities built around the same idea: open the page, get the result, keep your data to yourself.
You can shape the output with 3 settings, including Items that contain, Treat the pattern as a regular expression and Case-sensitive matching, and the result refreshes the moment you change one. A worked example further down the page shows exactly what the tool produces for a real input.
That local-first design has practical benefits beyond privacy. The tool keeps working on a flaky connection once the page has loaded, results are instant because nothing round-trips to a server, and it is safe to use with confidential material.
Frequently asked questions
Is Find Certain List Items free to use?
Yes, it is completely free. All 2,658 tools on EditSafely work without an account, a subscription or usage limits.
Is it safe to paste sensitive or confidential data?
Everything happens locally. Your browser downloads the tool's code once, then does all the processing itself; nothing you enter is transmitted, stored or logged. You can even go offline after the page loads and it will still work.
How much text can I process at once?
There is no fixed limit. Because the work happens on your own device rather than on a shared server, the practical ceiling is your machine's memory, which comfortably handles inputs far larger than typical online tools allow.
Do I need to sign up or install anything?
No. The tool works in any modern browser on desktop, tablet or phone. There is no account to create, no extension to add and no software to install.
How do I use the result?
The output panel has a one-click copy button, and you can keep refining the input while you work; the result updates in place as you type.