The Start Menu integrated search would have been real nice if it worked properly, but unfortunately they decided on some kind of “search” algorithm that can't even do a substring match on items in the Start Menu. I have no clue what the thinking there was, but it drives me to not want to use it.
I think what drives me mad is its nondeterminism.
If I hit Winkey and type a string, it should not be the case that I get different results from doing that 6 times in a row because it depends whether some background task which changes the results finishes first.
Another thing these "search boxes" (happens on macOS/iOS also AFAIK) is that sometimes even exact matches don't match unless you're using some specific length.
So if I type "ABC" I see the right application. If I type "AB" I don't see it anymore. But if I do "A" then I see the right application. So you have to then always remember to do either "A" or "ABC", because doing "AB" shows a completely different result as the first hit.
Completely bonkers behavior, and shit like this convinced me that neither Microsoft nor Apple has actual UX professionals employed anymore, or they don't have sufficient power to actually influence how things are made.
A personal pet peeve of mine as well, and a good example of when a product is trying to be too clever. I think (suspect) what is happening is that it is remembering partial matches and your selection, but like you I find it has the opposite effect.
If I type `f`, the first item on the list is Firefox, if I then type `fi`, it selects Figma instead. Keep typing, `fig`, now it has a Safari tab selected instead for figma.com. Pinnacle UX.
Yeah... sometimes it doesn't find anything.
Anyways, this has pitched me towards app "Everything"
I occasionally check whether after all these years MS has fixed the search... no, no surprise there.
I get that it depends on indexing service which may be buggy, etc... but I guess it is possible to prioritize/have alternate index for most important stuff like executables. This bugs me the most: there is a program, but I cannot find it. I must know to navigate my way within start menu or program files (for stuff like debugging/perf tools from Microsoft)
And given lots of comments there are on HN about Windows search, why no MS guy here silently sitting has escalated this "sentiment" to the correct ears? Oh please.
Given that Windows search has been this broken for decades, do you think Microsoft is going to start caring _now_?!
Next thing you'll be asking to make OneDrive even remotely predictable in its behavior (other than the predictability of "never doing what I expect or want").
Everything is an absolute gem. I literally cannot survive on the work computer without it. At home on Linux, this is one of things (probably the only one even) I really missed from Windows.
Have you seen FSearch? https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch It's quite similar to Everything.
Btw, there's also fooyin which you may say is "modeled" after foobar2000 https://github.com/fooyin/fooyin - another piece I miss from Windows.
That's annoying, but I think what's worse is these:
Start typing a word, see the thing you want, finish the word, it disappears.
And
Start typing, see what you want, stop typing and hit enter, but it changed to something else between when you saw it and when you hit enter.
Yes, there have been some obvious race conditions - especially with the web results or on gnome/linux with the listing of open browser tabs.
In a similar vein the browser search bar keeps remembering things you mistype once, and if your automatism is to type "n" and then press enter to go to "news.ycombinator.com" you will end up on the wrong page over and over again, because internally it keeps a counter and ranks higher depending on number of times you have "clicked" it.
Quite annoying UX with many search bar implementations and it makes me feel like the people who design these are not actual power users of their own software.
Yeah, I never used it. I have barely ever used it since then.