Kvaesitso
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MM2-0
[Enhancement] Sort app search results by relevance
At the moment, the results are sorted alphabetically. I think that it would be better if it was sorted by "relevance". By that, I'm thinking of something like this:
- apps starting with the search term
- apps with a word starting with the term (also taking into account that some apps are in PascalCase)
- substring match
- other fuzzy matches
I think this would technically be possible, however I'm not sure if it would really improve usability. Right now, the results are sorted alphabetically which is understandable, everyone knows how the alphabet works and we are all trained to find what we're looking for in a list of alphabetically ordered items. If we change the sorting order to be sorted by relevance, we would need to make sure that the user still understands why the results are sorted this way, otherwise it might actually be harder to spot the right result in that know seemingly unsorted list of items (especially if we have more than 10 results). Maybe it would be a good idea to move only the most relevant 1-2 item(s) to the top of the list and keep the rest as is?
Maybe if the matches are visually highlighted. For example, if you search for "bro":
- Bromite
- Tor Browser
- Librera Pro
- Invizible Pro
I have no idea how hard it is to implement though.
Another option would be that it's a setting to sort the results either alphabetically or by relevance.
For reference, this is how KISS Launcher shows it (in reverse order from the bottom):
I also looked at 2 launchers from the Play Store (Nova and Niagara), and although they return results by relevance, they don't highlight where the match was made.
A difference I noticed though, is that they match differently. For Niagara, the app name has to contain the substring, it won't do any fuzzy matching. Nova, on the other hand, only matches by prefix (searching for "nvi" won't return "InviZible Pro"), BUT does some fuzzy matching using the beginnings of words ("inp" will return "InviZible Pro" and "std" returns "SkipTheDishes").
Thanks for the research, I guess my doubts are unfounded then. I will look into it!
For reference, this is how KISS Launcher shows it (in reverse order from the bottom):
Kiss launcher is such an incredible software, I find it nearly impossible to switch to other launchers even for a day. Kvaesitso has a nice widgets drawer that I really liked but the search isn't quite there yet. An hybrid of two apps would be quite perfect.
This was added and can be closed
Was this added? I'm unable to find this behavior in the latest release. Searching for "ma" orders Gmail before Maps when sorting search results both alphabetically and by usage, despite Maps starting with "ma".
I agree that search results seem a little finicky sometimes, but switching between "usage" and "alphabetically" definitely produces different search results for me.
About Gmail showing before Maps when searching for "ma" alphabetically: G comes before M and both contain the search string, so that is probably why. In the usage case: you probably are using Gmail more often than Maps. The usage setting basically tracks how many times you have launched a specific app, compared to how many times any app was launched, and orders by "most launched".
This was added and can be closed
What I meant by this was the addition of the "usage" search ordering.
This issue appears to be about sorting by relevance, as opposed to usage. I understand why Gmail comes before Maps in both cases, but a sort as described in this issue would change that. Can this be left open if/until that is implemented?
Like the other comments, it would be nice If example "ing" ist first App in row and start the "Ing"-App to start with enter. At the Moment there are "Shopping"-Apps at first place.
For me its a more Natural and faster was to start Apps or Open websites.
