SUMMARY When searching for applications in applications menu, Plasma can no longer find them by their executable name (relevant in case executable name and Name key in app's desktop entry are not the same). STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Have system language set to one for which KSysGuard's desktop entry's Name key is not "KSysGuard" (such as Polish) 2. Type ksysguard in application menu search OBSERVED RESULT There is no search result for KSysGuard application. EXPECTED RESULT KSysGuard application is in the list of search results. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux/KDE Plasma: Fedora Linux 37 (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.0 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.103.0 Qt Version: 5.15.8 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION This issue was not present in Plasma 5.26.2
I'm afraid this was an intentional change in Plasma 5.27. The feature produced tons of false positives and made people complain about the search results being weird. We ended up adding so many exceptions to it to fix those bugs that we realized the feature itself was flawed by design.
Well. In that case I think that application names in their desktop entries not matching their actual names (for some of them it also depends on locale) should be treated as a bug.
What we've been doing on a case-by-case basis is adding the executable name into the app's list of keywords. We've now done for a few projects I can think of, including Info Center (kinfocenter) and Clock (kclock). This is really easy to do, so when you encounter a case where this would be useful, please feel free to file a bug report for the app in question, or even better, a merge request. Adding a keyword to a .desktop file is something anyone can do. :) Could be a good contribution opportunity! I'd be happy to help you through the process of doing it for the first time, if you'd like.
*** Bug 467420 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 467520 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***