Super simple idea, possibly hard to implement

[TotalFanboy]

I am looking for a program that does one thing: You type in a word or phrase, then the program highlights every instance of the word/phrase in all opened applications, including in Directory Opus, and web browser tabs.

There used to be a program called Text Spotlight that did this, but it last worked with Windows XP. I have exhausted my Google search skills looking for a program that can do this, to no avail. Help me Obi-Wan DonationCoder, you're my only hope!

[ibay770]

link to the software OP referenced.

https://web.archive.org/web/20021210223627/http://www.textspotlight.com/download.htm

[Tuxman]

That would be pretty hard to implement indeed, given that "all opened applications" can be web browsers, 3D games, file managers, text editors... all of them have a different definition of what "text" is. 

[paradisusvic]

"all opened applications" can be web browsers, 3D games, file managers, text editors...

I concur. What can be done realistically is narrowing the list of opened applications to be "all supported applications", with modules defining each application and a centralized always-on service that can be invoked to run each highlighting module on demand.

(This way the app can be extended by multiple programmers over time)

[Tuxman]

A modular approach would probably work (and is a good idea for most applications, actually), but if we limit the subset of supported applications to those which have a sane definition of (and sufficient ways to highlight) "text", the result will likely not really cater TotalFanboy's needs wishes. 

[ibay770]

DnGrep does this for text files. But yes, getting it working om other stuff would be hard.