How to do a search for the selected text?

Enable the editor.find.seedSearchStringFromSelection setting as seen below. This will cause highlighted texted to automatically be searched when you press ctrl+f.

Ultraedit-way search is my favorite and it's really convenient: single 'F3' key can handle all.

The drawback of Ctrl+D is: it cannot wrap around the search.

To be clear, the definition of Ultraedit-way search is: When pressed F3 and there's no selected text it performs the last search, if there is a selected text then it searches for the selected text in the current file.

Here is the absolutely 100%-compatible solution to Ultraedit-way search:

• When text is selected, do nextSelectionMatchFindAction
• When no text is selected, do nextMatchFindAction
• Single F3 does both above.
• Shift+F3 keeps its original: Find Previous

Therefore keybindings.json can add the following lines to disable original F3 and Ctrl+F3 functions, and add two new F3 functions when text is selected and not selected.

{
    "key": "f3",
    "command": "editor.action.nextSelectionMatchFindAction",
    "when": "editorFocus && editorHasSelection"
},
{
    "key": "ctrl+f3",
    "command": "-editor.action.nextSelectionMatchFindAction",
    "when": "editorFocus"
},
{
    "key": "f3",
    "command": "editor.action.nextMatchFindAction",
    "when": "editorFocus && !editorHasSelection"
},
{
    "key": "f3",
    "command": "-editor.action.nextMatchFindAction",
    "when": "editorFocus"
}

And one more thing to be addressed: When F3 is pressed, the search dialog is appeared and every matched text is highlighted, you can press ESC to dismiss search dialog when search is done.

Update @2021/1/25 If anyone wants Shift+F3 to works as smart as F3, add the following line into keybindings.json:

{
    "key": "shift+f3",
    "command": "editor.action.previousSelectionMatchFindAction",
    "when": "editorFocus && editorHasSelection"
},
{
    "key": "shift+f3",
    "command": "editor.action.previousMatchFindAction",
    "when": "editorFocus && !editorHasSelection"
},
{
    "key": "shift+f3",
    "command": "-editor.action.previousMatchFindAction",
    "when": "editorFocus"
},

I have found what I was looking for.

Ctrl+D triggers the action Add Selection To Next Find Match which does exactly what I wanted: perform an immediate search for the selected text, just like F3 in Ultraedit.