Don't forget the search that doesn't work. You have app "X" installed? You type X and it doesn't find it, but gives you irrelevant results about X.

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Someone1234 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Windows' search has been broken for multiple generations now. Some people inside Microsoft seemingly even know, that's why the PowerToys team created "PowerToys Run." A Windows Search that actually basically functions correctly.

People act like it sudden was broken in Windows 11 when in reality it never worked correctly in 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 either. Instead of fixing it, they've only made it worse. It seems like nobody in Microsoft works on core stuff anymore.

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branko_d an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If memory serves, Windows 2000 was the last version where search worked reliably. It was a simple linear search through files which could take a while on larger folders, but was reliable and predictable since it did not rely on a background indexing service which seems to get stale or just plain wrong most of the time.

If I search for “foo”, I’d like to get all files containing “foo” please, without a shadow of a doubt that some files were skipped, including those that I have recently created. I still can’t get that as of Windows 11!

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kdheiwns 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, I've never experienced Windows search ever working. Even on XP, it couldn't find commonly opened folders or programs for me. It always felt like some sort of joke feature just meant to fool me into wasting time.

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Krssst 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As far as I remember it was working well in 7 and 8 (deterministic and shows programs that you expect it to show). From 10 it started behaving erratically (same time it got binged but maybe unrelated).

	▲	beart 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It had problems in 8. I would frequently type my search term, see it was the number one result. I would then attempt to arrow or tab down and hit enter to launch that result. Between arrowing down and hitting enter, the result list would update/reorder and suddenly I'm launching some unknown program. Happened all the time.

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pooploop64 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's weird how it does seem to do something even though it doesn't do anything. You can see the search indexer running and it's pulling a varying amount of power towards some kind of goal but nobody seems to know what it is. Does it build an index that always corrupts? Is it in a loop of crashing and restarting itself? And it's been like this my whole life practically. It really shows how anything can be normalized if it goes on long enough.

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Rapzid 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At one point (last year?) internet search results would load in first so quickly typing and pressing "enter" from muscle memory would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted..

Then also in the past year or two the internet search results were lagging the entire search UI causing type jank and stutters.

I disabled internet results in the registry but a recent update seems to have caused that setting to no longer apply ;(

	▲	skeeter2020 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>> would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted. and even worse, in Edge!

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badpun 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One of the first things to do on a fresh install is to disable the Web search results in Start menu search. There's a setting in the registry to do it.

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BeetleB 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same problem on MacOS.

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Krasnol an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

...where we get to one of the best things about Windows: there is a free (and probably open source) tool for everything: https://www.voidtools.com/