Hi, this bug is on openSUSE Tumbleweed with Plasma 5.14.0, KDE Frameworks 5.50.0, and Qt 5.11.2. Basically, when I search for the name of the "Oracle VM VirtualBox" application in the Plasma start menu or Krunner, it finds it when I type a single `v`, but not with `vm`.
Created attachment 115656 [details] Finds "Oracle VM VirtualBox" with the letter `v`
Created attachment 115657 [details] Does NOT find "Oracle VM VirtualBox" with the term `vm`
Applications are not stored in the Baloo DB but retrieved from the *.desktop files -> reassigning. TLDR: for search terms with 1 or 2 characters, only the executable name is taken into account, descriptions etc. are only used for 3 or more characters. If you search for "vb", VirtualBox will likely show up.
bug 400857 seems related
Yeah, this actually bothers me too (since trying out KDE for the first time :D). Maybe I can look into it but there is a lot of other stuff going on.
To explain what's happening. V is not matching "Oracle VM VirtualBox" V is matching to the GenericName in the .desktop file "Virtual Machine" so we show the entry. Neither name nor generic name start with "VM" so nothing shows. Things are working exactly as intended, though that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. Your underlying bug is that we're matching an application name starts with a string not whether any word in the name starts with a string.
*** Bug 407255 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***