start isearch with first hit at currently visited portion of a file

rather than the first matching phrase in the file below point (which may very well be outside of the currently visible file region) ​ Is there some setting for this?

By default, pressing C-g during an isearch will restore the buffer position, which is what I would recommend. You could also filter out any isearch results that are not within the range `(window-start)` to `(window-end)`: (defun isearch-filter-within-window (beg end) (and (< beg (window-end)) (>= end (window-start)))) (advice-add isearch-filter-predicate :before-while #'isearch-filter-within-window)

Why don't you put together a small help function for that. Whilst I am not aware of any configuration that allows you to do what you have described, something of the following could work. (defun <func-name> () (interactive) (save-excursion (goto-char(window-start)) (isearch-forward))