To reproduce: 1. Open any page (including about:blank) 2. Open the global search panel and enable searching by regular expressions. (I think this is what I did, I’m now unable to verify) 3. Search for `'isapprox' ||` (without the backticks) 4. hit return to start the search Expected behavior: no results, or a warning that the regex matches the empty string Actual behavior: web inspector hangs. There is no way to edit the search text since reopening the search tab causes the search to be conducted again. Also, I cannot find a way to put some text into the search field remotely (such as from a context menu somewhere) [If you know where the setting that persists the search string is stored, please tell me so that I can get back the use of my search feature!] macOS 13.2 (22D49) STP Release 162 (Safari 16.4, WebKit 18615.1.18.2)
<rdar://problem/105231661>
Finally remembered the workaround for this issue: go to the Settings tab and then choose General if it isn’t open already. Enable “⇧⌘F from selection” if it isn’t already checked. Then select some harmless text (like a variable name) in the Source tab and hit ⇧⌘F. You may need to close and reopen the Web Inspector after doing this to get back to a working state.