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Comment by makecheck | Hacker News Reader

The search behaves “as if” it’s using randomly-ordered keys in a random source dictionary, and it’s maddening.

If I type what seems to be the same 3 letters a few times in a row, the result is always different: one time it acts like the app isn’t even installed, another time it finds the app (first choice), another time it finds some other random sub-component instead of the app with a weird file extension. Oh, and my favorite: sometimes it finds multiple things but only after a delay, meaning that just as I hit Enter the top hit changes and I end up opening something entirely unintentional (bonus points if the mistaken choice is something that takes longer to launch, freezing the machine).

They need: (1) stability in the UI (never mess with something once it is highlighted), and (2) stability in the lookup (the same input produces the same set in the same order, every single time or it’s useless).

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If anyone from Microsoft happens to be reading this thread, please read the above comment, then re-read it. It's a spot-on description of the problems and solutions for Windows search.

Edit: and just to expand on a point the commenter made, the results would be more valuable if it prioritised in an order like this:

1) Something the user has pinned

2) Something the user has launched a bunch of times

3) The shortcut leads to an .exe that's likely to be the main program file

4) Anything else

5. Never anything on the web

There's a registry setting to turn that off thank God.

I LIKE Windows 10, but that particular "feature" is a no go for me.

It would be useful for the user to be linked to a vetted and official store app if the name matches and the user does not have it installed already. Although there are privacy considerations about sending search terms to the Internet, so a list of store apps could be cached on the local machine instead.

This. Even MS salespeople never try to slip in “windows search barring” in place of “googling”.

Basically agree but would quibble with your 1. If I've pinned an application (as I do for anything I use regularly) surely it's because I want to launch it quickly via the taskbar rather than having to go via search. If I'm in search it's because I'm looking for something else.

True for you, but not everyone. I find tapping the windows key, typing a few letters, then tapping enter, is much faster and comfortable than touching the mouse.

Try holding windows key and pressing the number that corresponds with the order of the pinned item.

Absolutely - the file system also has attributes like atime - the last accessed time of a file. It isn't as granular on windows, but a search could still prioritize files by when they were last read.

Apple's spotlight has had these kind of features for a long time too, though most of the time it mostly works.

It loses your input, it baits-and-switches, it opens completely irrelevant software (often uninstallers that immediately begin an uninstall process or never-used settings pages), some applications are plain missing from there and have to be accessed through the application menu always.

Spotlight does have a bad habit of finding applications in your Time Machine backup though

> Apple's spotlight has had these kind of features

Features? Surely, you mean these kind of bugs? :)

It’s not bugs. The software is working as designed. It’s badly designed features.

It’s pretty stable for me.

I start typing "Code", by the time "Cod" is typed, I see VS Code and want to press enter, before I realize that, I get done typing the "e" and out of nowhere "code.bat" (whatever that is) appears and gets executed.

Stable at a PoS level.

Windows search is the worst part about Windows 10 for me and I have no idea how anyone ever thought it was at a better than some pre-alpha stage. All the different updates do, are make it behave in new utterly dumb ways.

Luckily Keypiranha means I rarely ever need it.

On Windows 8.1, when I want to run Paint.NET I have to remember to accept the suggestion before typing the full name; it guesses correctly until I finish the .net, at which point it decides I want to open a web page.

(Honestly though I'm pretty happy with it, it's good enough that I never miss the old-fashioned Start menu like I expected to.)

In fairness, knowing about prefix codes and top level domains, paint.NET is an unforgivably bad name for a program.

This system no doubt sits on years of dusty debt, but really how hard can it be?

There are literally dozens of third party search/launch apps that are better.

I don’t know what kind of matching it uses but it’s not good. Is it prefix only? Is it case sensitive? What metadata is used in the match (what is displayed as a program name or something else)?

If I started writing a simple indexer app with an SQLite file and a little search box I’d have something more useful for finding apps after one afternoon.

So what exactly is the Windows search trying to do that I’m not considering, that makes it so hard that it fails with the trivial stuff like text matching?

My favorite part of Windows 10 search is how when I enter "bittorrent" it has absolutely no idea what I mean. The program is called qbittorrent.

When looking for QGis i write:

Q -> nothing

Qg/Qg -> Qgis

QGi -> nothing

Qgis -> websearch

Yeah; that's pretty standard, alas :-(

Weird. I too have qBittorent installed and the Start menu search finds it as first option when I type 'bitt' ('bit' gives 64-bit Python launcher)... not too shabby.

"bitt" shows me zero results, but "bitto" (all the way to "bittorrent") works. It's beyond b0rked!

Same. And "torrent" returns no results at all. :/

Funny. "bitt" -> nothing. "bitto" -> works. "bitt" -> now works as well.

I have qBittorrent installed. For me searching "bitt" displays only "Battle.net", which is not even a valid match. hilarious.

Good catch, so if you type "bitto" then hit backspace to "bitt", it works, but hit backspace again ("bit") and it'll disappear (it even shows me "Notepad", because why not)!

At this point in this thread, I'm starting to hope someone reverse engineer windows search, and do a write-up of how the indexing, stemming and search actually works...

bi -> Random file

bit -> Bitlocker

bitt -> qBittorrent (yay!)

bitto to bittorent -> web search

weird. works for me: https://i.imgur.com/9kBh2uB.png

Different for different users then: https://imgur.com/a/548crWn

Yeah I assume this is some indexing snafu. Or who knows. I enjoy this behavior more than it annoys me nowadays :)

Sometimes search just fails to work - I have not seen that before 10. The search bar in explorer windows appears disabled (can't use it), or worse, it doesn't list some files - some searches work fine, some don't. Have to close all windows and reopen. Jesus Christ.

https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/ solves this problems for W10.

Of all the programs not to have a single screenshot on its homepage..

What i find strange is, i type in a program that is recently added and listed at the top of the start menu, and it doesn't come up in the search..

Then, i tried searching again, and it comes up, 3rd time lucky.. Doesn't make sense at all!

It makes perfect sense if your indexing is very slow or broken..

If the index isn't updated instantly then they should account for that by first searching the index (for speed) and then manually trawling through the Start Menu folders for results which are missing from the index.

Maybe the varying results can be explained by your searches being routed to different servers, with each server having slightly different indexes or algorithms?

Do you see the same issue when disconnected from the web?

Why would servers be involved in local search? But this raises a good point: mixing local and web search by default is stupid and confusing as well.

I actually turn off all the annoying web targets, I’m mainly interested in launching apps (which frankly should simplify the problem and make reliable results more likely).

As someone who was regularly frustrated with the problems you describe, it seems that recently (I think with the 1903 upgrade, but not sure) things have gotten a lot better and I finally feel the start menu is listening to me again.

>the same input produces the same set in the same order, every single time or it’s useless

Sounds like you want to freeze search index at some point in time. This is actually useless. Also keep in mind that indexing is a background task.

No, you just need to record and track wheights for each selected or pinned search term. This way you can update the index and all meaningful entries will still be displayed in the same order due to the influence of the wheights.

Order should change, but if I type "Ble" I would like Blender (the only entry I ever selected after typing "Ble" to come first and not some random file I never ever opened manually.

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