Gets the URLSearchParams object representing the query parameters of the URL. This property is read-only but the URLSearchParams object it provides can be used to mutate the URL instance; to replace the entirety of query parameters of the URL, use the search setter. See URLSearchParams documentation for details.

Use care when using .searchParams to modify the URL because, per the WHATWG specification, the URLSearchParams object uses different rules to determine which characters to percent-encode. For instance, the URL object will not percent encode the ASCII tilde (~) character, while URLSearchParams will always encode it:

const myURL = new URL('https://example.org/abc?foo=~bar');

console.log(myURL.search);  // prints ?foo=~bar

// Modify the URL via searchParams...
myURL.searchParams.sort();

console.log(myURL.search);  // prints ?foo=%7Ebar