How to make PhpStorm automatically highlight selection

Question

I cannot find a way to make PhpStorm highlight the appearances of a selected word/string in a file automatically at the time of the selection.

Example - say I have this code (the logic doesn't matter):

$app = new App(); //this is an app var of type "App" that contains our Application
$application_ranks = $app_array['app_rankings'];    //some operation

Now, I make a selection - say I select the first "app" part.

PhpStorm behavior with BrowseWordAtCaret plugin installed (no highlighting whatsoever):

Sublime Text 2 behavior (incomplete):

Notepad++ behavior (close, but still not perfect):

PhpDesigner 8 behavior (works as expected):

To save your time, I am aware of the "Highlight Usages" feature which pretty much does the same thing - the problem though is that this works only for variables/classes/function names/function calls etc, while what I am after is for this to work for ANY selected sequence of characters, regardless if it is a variable or a comment or a function or whatever. Like if you pressed Ctrl+F (Find).

I did try the BrowseWordAtCaret plugin for PhpStorm suggested in this post but it still doesn't provide this functionality.

Is it possible to somehow achieve this? I am quite bewildered that something so simple (and basic - maybe even fundamental for coding in my opinion) is so hard to achieve on an editor this full of capabilities and so much devoted to provide a great user experience etc.

Thanks for your time!

Answer 1

Not the perfect solution, yet close enough:

Top Menu -> View -> Highlight Word at Caret

or alternatively:

Settings -> Editor -> General -> Appearance - Highlight Word at Caret

Note that this is a BrowseWordAtCaret plugin option, so it requires the installation of the plugin. To install it, go to Settings -> Plugins -> Browse Repositories -> BrowseWordAtCaret -> Install.

This will still not highlight the word if it's part of another string, but it will highlight it in all other occasions. Example:

PhpStorm:

PhpDesigner: