I also missed multiple courses, but I started using vim-visual-multi in my nvim config and it's been great. There's a few others I tried that I couldn't get to work quite right (usually some weird conflict with nvim-cmp) but I've had the best success with vim-visual-multi.
I'm gonma bookmark and try this next time I find the courage to mess around my nvim config. That last none_ls breaking change has made me very hesitant to mess around with things that aren't just colorschemes ngl.
This feels like something I also do in neovim unless I'm misunderstanding you completely. Is it highlighting text and having yoir search apply just to the highlighted text?