Substring search in Start8

from Stardock Forums

Is there any way to make the Search in Start8 also do substring searches, at least for program names?  Searching for "vpn" or "vpn gui" doesn't find "OpenVPN GUI"; likewise "imgur" doesn't find "MyImgur".

Bonus points -- an option to just search for items in the start menu folder, instead of giving me lots of hits from documents etc. that I don't care about.

 

start8
1,486 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

I just wanted to add some complains about searching engine. Here is a pair of samples. When I enter "Stream" in native start menu it activates Steam application, but Start8 activates Steam support center web page. When I enter "Visual" in native start menu it activates Visual Studio application, but Start8 activates "Reset the Visual Studio 2013 Preview Experimental Instance". I will not buy it if I cannot simply use it.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

The top search item will depend very much on the frequency of app usage.

So once you pick the steam application after searching for steam a few times it will become the top most item and so you could then press enter without looking, but before then the results will depend on both keyword matching (and yes it does work on substrings) and shortcut creation date.

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Well, thanks, that worked for Steam app. But as for Visual Studio, Start8 cannot find it at all. The link is placed here: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Visual Studio 2013\Visual Studio 2013 Preview.lnk. Here is screenshots:Start8

As you see, Start8 cannot find it. Native start menu finds it well.

P.S. But I must say that "Visual Studio 2013 Preview" is present in recently used apps list in Start8 menu.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Start8 will simply list the X top items in each category.  You can increase the number of items shown by making the start menu taller, or by using the Start8Tweak app to disable some categories which will increase the space allocated for the other sections.

The search is carried out against the OS indexing service and the results depend on that information.