Bug 357985

Summary: [rfe] improve application search results
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Christian Stadelmann <dah5aeZe>
Component: Application Menu (Kicker) widgetAssignee: Eike Hein <hein>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE    
Severity: wishlist CC: kde, nate, notuxius, plasma-bugs-null
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.5.3   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Fedora RPMs   
OS: Linux   
See Also: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=431204
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Christian Stadelmann 2016-01-14 15:48:39 UTC 
Currently there seems to be no algorithm to smartly reorder search results. If you search for some string the first matching application will be displayed, not the best match.

Gnome-shell activities overview does these (I think):
1. order "trailing matches" before in-name matches
2. remember frequently used applications and give them a higher priority

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open application search
2. type something
3. look at results
4. select application to run (mouse or keyboard)

Actual Results:  
When searching for "tor", "Designeditor" is placed first, "Tor Browser" is placed on ~8th position.

This doesn't change even when I repeat those steps above.

Expected Results:  
When searching for "tor", "Tor Browser" is the best match and should be placed first.

When repeatedly searching and choosing one application, this application should be displayed first. With this I don't need to use mouse or arrow keys to select the application I want to start.
Comment 1 Kai Uwe Broulik 2016-01-14 16:44:46 UTC 
I think KRunner does this but Kickoff/Kicker do not.
Comment 2 Eike Hein 2016-01-17 16:14:26 UTC 
Vishesh, does KRunner have any API to use here?
Comment 3 Vishesh Handa 2016-01-17 17:24:22 UTC 
(In reply to Eike Hein from comment #2)
> Vishesh, does KRunner have any API to use here?

Just the applications runner. It has some heuristics to try and give each result a different weight. But it clearly seems to be lacking.

KRunner does try to remember launches, but the code is ugly.
Comment 4 Alexander Mentyu 2017-08-28 11:07:06 UTC 
Looks related to - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=383812
Comment 5 Nate Graham 2022-06-25 16:09:18 UTC 

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 340283 ***