diff --git a/app/src/processing/app/FindReplace.java b/app/src/processing/app/FindReplace.java
index 922bcc9ba..57c851dd7 100644
--- a/app/src/processing/app/FindReplace.java
+++ b/app/src/processing/app/FindReplace.java
@@ -454,9 +454,22 @@ public class FindReplace extends JFrame {
     editor.setSelection(0, 0);
 
     boolean foundAtLeastOne = false;
-    while (true) {
+    int startTab = -1, startIndex = -1, c = 50000; 
+    // you couldn't seriously be replacing 50K times o_O
+    while (--c > 0) {
       if (find(false, false)) {
-        foundAtLeastOne = true;
+        if(editor.getSketch().getCurrentCodeIndex() == startTab 
+          && editor.getSelectionStart() == startIndex){
+          // we've reached where we started, so stop the replace
+          Toolkit.beep();
+          editor.statusNotice("Reached beginning of search!");
+          break;
+        }
+        if(!foundAtLeastOne){
+          foundAtLeastOne = true;
+          startTab = editor.getSketch().getCurrentCodeIndex();
+          startIndex = editor.getSelectionStart();
+        }
         replace();
      } else {
         break;