PowerToys Run cannot update results immediately after typing, pressing Enter too soon starts the wrong thing

[ivan]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.69.1

Installation method

GitHub

Running as admin

No

Area(s) with issue?

PowerToys Run

Steps to reproduce

1. Install PowerToys 0.69.1 on a ~12 year old (or otherwise slow) laptop running Windows 10 22H2.
2. Use PowerToys Run, type fast and press Enter.
3. Observe that usually the wrong thing is started because you didn't wait long enough for the results list to update.

This is easy for me to reproduce on an old / slower laptop and may be hard to reproduce on a newer / faster computer.

The results list doesn't update immediately after typing; there is some delay that makes it very easy to start the wrong thing when pressing Enter. This happens in PowerToys Run (0.69.1) with Input Smoothing disabled, Immediate plugins: 0 ms, and all the plugins except Programs disabled. That is, there is apparently no set of options that makes it safe to press Enter blindly after typing:

PowerToys Run (0.51.1) worked better because it updated immediately, making it safe to press Enter blindly after typing:

✔️ Expected Behavior

It should be possible to configure PowerToys Run to update its results list synchronously after typing

❌ Actual Behavior

It is not possible to configure PowerToys Run to update its results list synchronously after typing

Other Software

No response

[klylesatepic]

I have been running into this even on a faster computer (i9-9900) -- if I type a string that I know matches what I want and immediately hit Enter, whatever I last launched opens instead of the thing I searched for.

I'd be ok with a delay while the search results caught up, as long as I can hit Enter right away and have the right thing launch. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/31918 seems to describe this approach.

[ivan]

Yes, this issue became much worse with whatever was released a few weeks ago. Whereas before PowerToys Run would launch the correct thing on my Windows 10 / 7950X3D, now it frequently launches the wrong thing.

[ivan]

Testing on my fast computer. Input smoothing disabled for PowerToys Run, typing fast and checking if it launches the right thing:

PowerToysSetup-0.83.0-x64.exe - bad PowerToysSetup-0.82.1-x64.exe - bad PowerToysSetup-0.81.1-x64.exe - good

---

Due to this and #33102, I gave up and switched to Flow Launcher, which doesn't seem to have either issue.

[ilpssun]

This is a major annoyance when entering a “well-known” abbreviation. E.g. when I want to open a terminal and press the following keys in quick succession, PowerToys does not launch a terminal but rather the previous search result:

• Alt-Space (activate PowerToys Run)
• _ (shortcut for new terminal)
• Enter

I think, the fix would be to act on Enter only after having evaluated the results of the previous key-presses.

BTW, I'm on fairly current hardware (Dell Latitude 5430 with i5-1245U)

[KingsMMA]

I'm having the exact same issue. @ilpssun's fix of an option to have "enter" act only after having properly processed the keystrokes would solve this for me - i.e. I have an environment where I just use PTR as an easy way to google search from anywhere, there's isn't any processing that should be needing to happen for that and yet it's often 10+ characters behind.