A highlight text tool finds every occurrence of a search term in your text and wraps it with visual markers — either brackets for emphasis or asterisks for censoring. Whether you are reviewing a document for key terms, moderating content, or finding patterns in a long text, this free online text highlighter makes it instant. No signup required. Try it now for instant results.
✨ Try the Free Online Highlight Text
How to Use Highlight Text — Step by Step
Step 1: Paste your text
Type or paste the full document or text passage into the input area. This can be a blog post, a legal document, user-generated content, code, or any text you need to analyze or moderate.
Step 2: Enter a search term
Type the word, phrase, or regex pattern you want to find in the search field. For simple terms, just type the word. For patterns like email addresses or phone numbers, check "Use regex" and enter a pattern like [\w.-]+@[\w.-]+\.\w{2,}.
Step 3: Choose your mode
Click "Highlight" to wrap matches in 【brackets】 for visual emphasis during review. Click "Censor" to replace matches with asterisks (****) matching the original word length for content moderation or privacy protection.
Step 4: Configure matching options
By default, matching is case-insensitive (matches "hello", "Hello", "HELLO"). Uncheck "Case-insensitive" for exact case matching. Check "Use regex" for JavaScript regular expression patterns.
Step 5: Review and copy
The output preserves all original text structure — only the matched portions are modified. Click Copy to use the highlighted or censored result in your workflow.
Real-World Examples
Content Review: A marketing manager highlights the brand name across a 5,000-word copy document to verify consistent usage and find unintentional omissions.
Profanity Censor: A forum moderator censors inappropriate words in user submissions by replacing them with asterisks while preserving surrounding text.
Pattern Finding: A researcher highlights all email addresses in a dataset using the regex pattern [\w.-]+@[\w.-]+\.\w{2,} for quick visual scanning.
Legal Document Review (Paralegal): You need to find every occurrence of a specific party name in a 200-page contract. Highlight mode wraps each mention in brackets for quick visual scanning without reading every page.
PII Protection (Data Engineer): Before sharing a dataset with an external analyst, you censor all Social Security number patterns (\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}) and credit card numbers using regex, replacing them with asterisks.
Code Review (Developer): You highlight all console.log statements in a codebase to find debugging code that should be removed before production deployment.
Translation QA (Localization): You highlight all untranslated English terms in a multilingual document using a regex for common English words to verify translation completeness.
Keyword Density Check (SEO): You highlight target keywords in your article to visually assess density and placement without manual counting.
Compliance Redaction (Legal): You censor client names, account numbers, and confidential terms in contracts before sharing with opposing counsel during discovery.
Features
- Highlight mode: wraps matches in 【brackets】 for visual emphasis
- Censor mode: replaces matches with asterisks (****) matching word length
- Case-insensitive matching for flexible search (on by default)
- Regular expression support for advanced pattern matching
- Preserves original text structure and surrounding content
- One-click copy to clipboard for the highlighted or censored result
- Real-time processing with no uploads or page reloads
- Works offline after initial page load
Tips & Best Practices
- Test regex first: Complex regex patterns can have unexpected matches. Test on a small sample first, then apply to the full document.
- Use word boundaries: For exact word matching, use
\bword\bin regex mode to avoid partial matches (e.g., "cat" in "category"). - Combine multiple terms: Use regex alternation
word1|word2|word3to highlight or censor multiple different terms in one pass. - Preserve context for review: Highlight mode keeps matched text visible in brackets — better for review than censoring when you need to verify the actual content.
- Censor irreversibly: Censor mode replaces text with asterisks permanently. Keep a backup of the original if you might need the uncensored version later.
- Use for code patterns: Highlight TODO/FIXME comments, debug statements, or deprecated API calls in codebases before release.
- Highlight structural elements: Use regex to highlight markdown headers (
^#{1,6}\s), code blocks, or list items for document structure analysis. - Batch process with Find & Replace: For actual text replacement (not just highlighting), use Find & Replace or Regex Find/Replace.
Common Use Cases
Content Moderators
Censor profanity, sensitive information, or restricted terms in user-generated content while keeping the rest of the text intact.
Writers & Editors
Highlight key terms, repeated phrases, or terminology across long documents for consistency review and quality checks.
Researchers & Analysts
Use regex patterns to find and highlight email addresses, phone numbers, URLs, or custom data patterns in large text datasets.
Legal & Compliance Teams
Identify and censor PII (personally identifiable information) in documents before external sharing.
Developers & QA Engineers
Find debug code, deprecated patterns, or security-sensitive code in codebases during review.
SEO Specialists
Visually assess keyword density, placement, and prominence in content for on-page optimization.
Localization & Translation Teams
Highlight untranslated terms, inconsistent terminology, and locale-specific patterns in multilingual content.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the difference between Highlight and Censor?
A: Highlight wraps matches in 【brackets】 so you can visually see them. Censor replaces matches with asterisks (***) matching the original word length, hiding the actual text.
Q: Can I use regular expressions?
A: Yes. Check the 'Use regex' checkbox and enter your pattern. The tool supports full JavaScript regex syntax for advanced pattern matching.
Q: Is case-insensitive matching on by default?
A: Yes. The case-insensitive checkbox is checked by default, so 'hello' matches 'Hello', 'HELLO', and 'hElLo'. Uncheck it for exact case matching.
Q: Does it preserve the surrounding text?
A: Yes. Only the matched text is modified (wrapped or replaced). Everything else remains exactly as in the original.
Q: Can I censor multiple different words at once?
A: You can enter a regex pattern that matches multiple words (e.g., word1|word2|word3) and censor them all in one operation.
Q: Is my text data stored on a server?
A: No. All processing happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to any external server.
Q: Can I undo the highlighting or censoring?
A: The tool doesn't have an undo button, but you can paste the original text again. For censored text, the original is permanently replaced — keep a backup.
Q: Does it work with multi-line matches?
A: By default, regex dot (.) doesn't match newlines. Use [\s\S] instead of . for multi-line patterns, or ensure your pattern accounts for line breaks.
Q: Can I highlight/censor overlapping matches?
A: The tool processes matches left-to-right. Overlapping matches are handled by the JavaScript regex engine's standard behavior (first match wins, then continues after the match).
Q: Is there a limit to how many matches it can handle?
A: No practical limit. The tool handles thousands of matches efficiently. Very large documents with many matches may take a moment to process.
Q: Can I use it to find and replace text?
A: This tool only highlights or censors. For find-and-replace with custom replacement text, use Find & Replace or Regex Find/Replace.