SUMMARY If I go to window overview and enter the full name of an installed flatpak application and press enter I would have thought that it would be obvious I want to launch it, but maybe it's not? Because somehow plasma thinks it should list it as the 2nd result and as 1st and default choice, the KDE discover page... even though it's already installed. This makes no sense to me: when it's already installed, why would I want to just go and sit and look at the discover page again rather than just use it? So in case this is intentional, I don't quite understand the workflow of how it works right now. My apologies if I'm missing something. (As a side note, GNOME Shell behaves as I described and will list the installed app first, and the store page as some later result.) STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Install discord from flathub 2. Activate window overview via e.g. the default top-left hot corner 3. Type "discord" 4. Press enter OBSERVED RESULT Opens KDE Discover store page. I would suggest this isn't what 99% of users want. It's also not obvious at all how to change this, if it's possible at all. I think I'm just going to uninstall KDE discover for now if it breaks results in this way. That does actually fix this behavior, but of course means I have to use the flatpak command line tool and can't use any of discover's update and browsing functionality. EXPECTED RESULT The installed discord app opens. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: Linux/KDE Plasma: openSUSE Slowroll, plasmashell 5.27.10 (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: plasmashell 5.27.10 KDE Frameworks Version: KDE Frameworks Version 5.113.0 Qt Version: Version 5.15.11 (built against 5.15.11) ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Okay this is even worse, when I type "discord" when a browser window happens to also have that in the title, I can't even launch it this way but just get the browser window. I'm not trying to be mean, but is it only me or does the search not seem that useful if the sorting is oddly mixed up like that? Surely it should go to exact app name match first, then same app's windows second, then others' apps windows with that keyword third, then discover results fourth, or something? Or like, maybe not what it does now at least, it seems like I never know what I'm getting, not even like the last item I launched with this keyword which would at least be predictable more than it is now.
Okay, after more playing around it seems like ALT+F2 basically does (mostly) what the GNOME activities search does. I guess the plasma activity launcher search is only really meant for windows, and everything else is just a second thought? I suppose under that assumption it kind of works for windows at least, although then I find it a little strange that it shows other results ever at all. Because it seems like when a window matches the other results are completely unavailable rather than somehow secondary but still there. As a consequence this to me begs the question, if I can't reliably get any of the other stuff listed anyway, why not just make it search ONLY between the open windows as a default in the first place? Why even show other results but only sometimes? Maybe it's just me, but the design just feels a little confused. Maybe this helps figuring out what might possibly work better.
This should be fixed in Plasma 6 now.
Created attachment 165834 [details] Screenshot of Activities/Windows Overview suddenly showing no search results even for searching the name of an app that's installed Sorry for the maybe unrelated question, but is what is going on in this screenshot I just attached the same bug or different? Because sometimes not only does it give a weird sorting with not showing the application on top as might be expected by the user (which I filed this bug for), but sometimes it just gives no results at all even for terms that used to previously return results. I haven't figured out yet when or why it does that, usually later it just magically works again.
That looks like something different.