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Comment by jeffrapp | Hacker News Reader

It’s so much worse than that. This happens to me on a daily basis with both MacOS and iOS. Say I’m searching for Chess, I’ll get to the C-H and it’ll show the Chess app, but enter that next -E and it’s totally gone. It feels like the system is designed like “Well, I showed them Chess when they entered CH, but they kept typing, so they must not actually want Chess.” This ends up breaking for me like 95% of the time, and the only way around it is to search like “C”…wait for results…”H”…wait for results…etc. It’s maddening.

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This, and then, if you notice, and backspace to remove the 'e', it doesn't put chess back into the search results, since it figures that everything that matches 'che' also matches 'ch', and so doesn't update it. Sometimes, if you add the 'e' again, it _will_ find chess, sometimes you need to type the 's', or even the final 's' before it gives you chess back again.

And sometimes, it finds what you want, but before you can select it, it decides that it has found something better, and places that in the place where you wanted to select, causing you to select the wrong thing. And then it thinks that because you selected this, it must be what you want, and starts to push it to the top…

Search is definitely frustrating.

Weird, the same stupid crap happens with Windows. I’ve had to learn the exact N character search to find the things I use often; any more or less and the result with that name is buried. It’s like Microsoft and Apple are just pip installing same broken search package.

On Windows I use PowerToys' Alt+Space command bar which does a much better job. In fact, it's the only search I use on Windows.

I switched to Everything for search a while ago and haven’t looked back. For the start menu I replace it with Open Shell, which seems to find apps much more reliably.

Good info, I’ll check it out. Thanks!

Always turn off searching the internet as much as possible on both. Helps a ton. I think I set both windows and iOS to only search local applications and settings

I don't find this to be the case at all.

Firefox's "awesome bar" behaves the same way. I guess it's either inherent to the problem somehow, or else everyone is sharing a library (unlikely), or else everyone just makes the same mistakes.

It's worse than this! You Type C-H-E then you go to press enter, and it changes the results as you're pressing it, opening the wrong thing! I've turned off all the search targets, except for applications and folders.

Absolutely. The mac spotlight search / bar was one of my favourite features, maybe 10 years ago? But now it’s useless.

It also has some strange behaviour when it’s not in focus, but hasn’t been closed.

I just leave every application open and command tab to them now.

I found people suggesting Raycast to replace Spotlight search and that's been far better and more consistent for me since I switched.

Changing the results just when you are going to action on them is a fundamental UX sin.

Yes. "UI Speed" should be a configurable thing, so that if the UI changes as you're choosing an item, it acts instead on _what was there_ at a brief moment in the past, e.g. 20-50ms ago.

I'm hit by this problem often. I wonder why UI updates which could well be incremental instead just replace the whole results from under your fingers!

Don't worry, airdrop does it too! I've accidentally sent airdrop requests to strangers from their profile picture moving under my finger as I'm approaching to touch someone else's. The single most idiotic design I've ever seen in UI. I don't use airdrop for anything sensitive anymore, obviously.

I have the same problem when i touch a result and it changes the result line at the exact moment.

This one drives me particularly crazy.

I really wish apps stopped doing that "search on type" thing in search boxes. You either need to have only a couple miliseconds of response time, or you need to confirm that you want the search process to start. Or maybe at least have some feedback showing "more content is loading, watch out, don't click".

The amount of misclicks daily because of crappy slow-but-should-be-fast search probably offsets by 10x the amount of time required to hit "enter" for the search to start.

For me search has been that way since the first MacOS 26.0 upgrade and apparently never fixed.

But speaking of quality overall (outside of the search glitch) - I use dual 5k LG monitors with my work MacBook and can get the MacOS Display Manager process to crash if I just enable variable rate refresh and put the computer to sleep, then wake it up. Apparently a known issue for a few years, still not fixed.

> I’ll get to the C-H and it’ll show the Chess app, but enter that next -E and it’s totally gone

It "works" exactly the same on Windows. How is that even possible?

It's probably asynchronous reranking doing something weird. My guess is that the underlying ranking algorithms in these desktop search bars are very ropey, and they can't debug or diagnose because privacy reasons means the developers don't get to see what results were generated for different query/index combos. Also search is probably just not staffed most of the time.

So many platforms with search have a variation of this problem now.

The other issue with Mac search is that it never tells you when it’s done, so you can’t tell if it searched and failed to find something or is still searching.

I find this theory pretty compelling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703471

Maybe they are overthinking it.

Either same guy got promoted over and over again or someone thought we must copy this genius search bar as is

'calc' used to bring up calculator, but now it becomes some widget to calculate distance inside the spotlight box. The worst thing is you can't even backspace out of it.

I'd take the widget! For me typing "calc" finds the "com.apple.calculator" folder. If I continue to "calcu" etc, it suggests "com.apple.ncplugin.calculator" instead. Brilliant intelligence right there.

For me the big one is whenever I type "sys" to get system settings, it pops up for a half second and then for some reason the top result is like "reset some system setting" and then I invariably get flashbanged because it turns off dark mode and there's no confirmation dialogue lmao. Maddening.

Typing “sound” and end up with some obscure sound setting as top option and the general “sound” control panel nowhere to be found. Every time.

I've deactivated every single type of data in Spotlight except Applications. It goes out of its way to still suggest files like C system files or header files, like "system_library.c". It didn't wait for AI to turn against us.

I was trying to see what happens here. It does give the Sound settings panel as the first hit. But when I then press Return, it opens System Settings, but does not actually go to the Sound settings, but General.

Also, search inside the Settings app has been broken for many releases now. I always wonder if anyone inside Apple is actually using macOS or iOS.

I had this problem on Spotlight, I solved it once and never happened to me again, there is a setting to reindex all the files, which solves the issue. On iOS however I still have this problem.

I wish all this shit would just stop trying to search as I’m fucking typing. It’s like that person we all know that can’t hold their tongue for five fucking seconds and let you finish a sentence before the blurt something out.

This seems like a general UI bug.

Q: For those amongst us who are UI experts, what is it called when dynamic lists populate unpredictably while a finger-tap is in-progress?

a) start query and see initial results

b) start finger-navigation, moving finger over initial results

c) start finger-tap descent

d) underlying list is updated, replacing future finger-tap destination's UI element with another

e) finger-tap meets different element than intended

It’s called layout shift.

Than You! Been looking for this. Cheers

I feel attacked, but it’s probably the same reason, we both think we know the answer before you finished.

Ah, but hitting enter now takes you to the top result! Therefore it has to search as you type, so there's something to activate as soon as you hit enter! /s

...I've been seeing this search style in more and more places recently, and I hate it. Let me type my search, then hit enter, then you can go find what I asked for. Don't slow everything down by searching on every character I type.

It’s called incremental search and it’s useful, but only when there’s some debouncing involved and the search results is presented at once or the items are sorted by the order they are found.

The best part is when you click on or press enter when you see "chess", but this is just as "cheese.com" is appearing so you open that instead.

I can't search for Apples own Notes app. I've tried the name in my local language, I've tried the original english name of the app. Nothing. It will show me OneNote which isn't even installed anymore, but not the Notes app. Very strange.

Don't they perform user testing?

- Do "normies" perform better with this behavior?

- Or is the goal to disturb the user and make something impractical like in Google, so that people click on ads? Software has turned into a curse. The machines have risen.

I always assumed that was intentional to save you arriving through options. I find that behaviour quite useful as I can hit anything beginning with CHE just by typing more letters.

I don’t get it. How is it useful that typing CHE you won’t see Chess even though it was visible before you got to type the E?

Because you watch as you type. You may not find it useful, I very much do for apps with colliding names.

>> the only way around it is to search like “C”…wait for results…”H”…wait for results…

Some people don’t like that. I don’t know why you like having to wait but if they showed Chess for CHE you could still find other apps if you kept typing.

Maybe there are also people who like the lottery of results changing the instant you click on the app you want because it adds excitement to their lives.

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