String locator

56 Quality Score

Active Installs

23/30

With 100,000 active installs the plugin has a sizeable footprint, though its score is held back by the fact that it is a niche utility rather than a broadly adopted feature plugin.

Update Freshness

5/25

Last updated on 2025-01-15 and tested against WordPress 6.7.5, so it is current, but the low weighting reflects that the update cadence has been modest relative to more actively developed tools.

User Rating

14/15

A 92 out of 100 from 125 ratings is a strong signal, suggesting the users who do install it tend to be happy with how it performs.

Support Health

8/15

The listed support thread count is zero with a 0 percent resolution rate, which is ambiguous and means there is no meaningful public track record to judge responsiveness.

WP Compatibility

8/15

It requires WordPress 4.9 or higher and is tested through 6.7.5, so compatibility is broad, though no PHP version is declared which is a small gap for server side scrutiny.

Scores higher than 6% of indexed plugins

About

Find and edit code or texts in your themes and plugins

Active Installs 100k+

Rating ★★★★½ 4.6/5

Last Updated 2025-01-15 1:59pm GMT

Requires WordPress 4.9+

Tested Up To 6.7.7

Security History

4 known vulnerabilities, all patched

2 High 2 Medium

Most recent: January 20, 2025

View details ▸

What It Does

String locator scans your installed WordPress themes and plugins for specific text strings and lets you jump directly to the file and line where they appear. It includes highlighting and syntax tools to make the search results readable. From there you can edit the matched file in place through the WordPress admin, which is its main draw over a basic search tool.

Who It's For

This is built for developers, agencies, and site maintenance pros who routinely need to locate and tweak strings inside themes and plugins without firing up FTP or a code editor. It is especially handy for translation work, white label customizations, and quick client fixes where the relevant snippet is buried somewhere in a dozen plugin folders.

Who Should Skip It

If you only need to search posts, pages, or custom post type content, this plugin is overkill and you would be better served by a dedicated search plugin like Relevanssi or Search Regex. Casual site owners who never edit theme or plugin code directly should also skip it, since editing PHP from the dashboard is risky and easy to break.

The Bottom Line

String locator does a narrow job well, and the 92 rating plus 100,000 installs show it has earned trust with hands on WordPress users. The overall quality score of 59.58 reflects weak signals around support and recent maintenance activity, so it is a useful tool but not a polished one. Treat it as a power user utility and pair it with proper backups and a staging workflow before editing any files it points you to.

Related Plugins

YMC Filter 86/100

Pick this instead if you want a front end filtering and search experience for visitors rather than an admin side file search tool.

Relevanssi – A Better Search 85/100

Choose Relevanssi when your goal is to improve on site search results for content, not to find strings inside plugin source files.

Ivory Search – WordPress Search Plugin 85/100

Go with Ivory Search if you need customizable front end search forms and filters and have no need to edit theme or plugin code.

Search Regex 84/100

Search Regex is the closest competitor and a good fallback if you want similar find and replace behaviour across posts, comments, and files but prefer its interface.

Ajax Search Lite – Live Search & Filter 84/100

Pick Ajax Search Lite when you want fast live search for end users, which is a completely different job than string location in source code.