Predictable suggestion order

I’m trialing this program, first problem is obvious, the order of suggestions is not predictable. This makes it really difficult to use it as a run dialog replacement.

Reason predictability is important is if you quickly start a program and the dialog seems to give different suggestions based on different reasons, it will ruin the muscle memory. “was it ‘wor’ and then two times down”? If it’s not same combination of keys next time, I just keep starting wrong apps or stare the dialog and wait what it comes up this time.

See for instance this, I typed “it” and it suggests me some test app I’ve written that does not even begin with word “it”.

I propose you just simply copy the suggestion system from the VSCode, see this example:

When I start typing “Logi” it suggests me “Login” but above this entry is the fuzzy matches, and below this entry is matches that begin with the result, and last one those which contain full matches not at the beginning.

Thank you.

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Thanks for your suggestion.

Listary sorts search results by both frequency and recency. So just open the target app once and it’ll become predictable the next time you search for it using the same query or even a prefix.

It didn’t come preferred. I’ve started it several times. I would highly prefer if it were predictable instead of based on heuristics. Especially if it were to include just apps. With files it’s a different case, there is so many of them.

Can you provide some examples that didn’t work well?

Also note that you can manually assign any keyword you like to an app in the Actions menu.

Maybe it would work better if I just to use it more, but if it works like this out of the box, it’s hard to justify using it:

Also, notice that I’ve turned Fuzzy matching off:

I would not expect to get whimsical suggestion if that is off.

Okay I’ve tested this more, what I think is going on that the suggestion priority ordering is aggressive when I’ve launched few apps.

Now it seems to suggest me “Logitech Gaming Software” for great many items, probably cause I’ve started it few times. But for me it ruins the muscle memory if the suggestion order is not predictable.

I’m used to putting all apps to desktop as icons, naming them so that I remember their names, and if I don’t get those suggestions first, I just get confused.

For me it would be perfect if the suggestion order were something like:

  1. Items that match 100%
  2. Items that begin with the match
  3. Items that has match (but not at the beginning of word)
  4. Fuzzy matches

However, the file search is so awesome that I might purchase this for that alone, Windows file search is abysmal.

Edit I just noticed, there is Shutdown in the list. I shutdown my computer yesterday accidentally when launching apps from memory, I just couldn’t understand what happened, now I know. I launched a wrong program. Shutdown of course belongs to the list, but illustrates nicely why the suggestion order must be predictable, to not launch wrong program when typing something from a memory.

I’m also evaluating Listary right now, and I have a similar gripe. In the past I’ve used Quicksilver on Mac OSX and found it to be a great, near-perfect app-launcher. Therefore, every app I now test for this purpose will be compared to that. I must say, in finding miscellaneous files, Listary is superior to the Mac tool. In app launching, the issue described here is the only thing it is lacking in comparison, so big compliments there :smile::thumbsup:

With Quicksilver, I could right-click a found item and from the context-menu make it the default for a given key sequence. Thus, I could enter “ff”, right-Click Firefox and make it the default, so that I could launch it without looking, just as @Ciantic (and I) desires. @Channing points towards keywords as a possible remedy. I tried that before coming to this forum. Unfortunately, keywords don’t get pushed to the top, which I find rather irritating. If I setup “ff” as my keyword for Firefox, I expect Firefox to be the first result when I enter “ff”. Is there something I’m missing?

Thanks for the detailed information. I just decided to redesign the sorting algorithm in the next major version. It will be much more predictable the first time you type a search query.

Is Firefox the top one after you type “ff” to launch it once?

Indeed it is. I did a little testing to get a grip on Listary’s behaviour. I used the built-in “opt” keyword, which will show the Listary options and “Logitech Options” which is a configuration tool for my mouse. After entering “opt” and selecting Listary options, it was first. When I subsequently selected Logitech Options, that became first. However, if I select Logitech Options after entering “opti”, it will not be first for “opt”. I think that makes it more predictable, now that I know all that. Might help @Ciantic for the time being :slight_smile:

That is awesome! I will get pro right away to support your efforts :thumbsup: Do you have a rough time-frame in mind for when that’ll become available?

Thank you for your support!

No ETA yet, but I’ve already started working on it.

Try the workaround of ending a search with a space poe[SP]