Global search (App launcher by keyboard search?)

On iOS and optionally on KISS Launcher on Android I can swipe down from the middle of the screen to get a search box and keyboard open instantly to search for app names to launch. I would like to have the same on SailfishOS as I have difficulties finding my apps (considering they get arranged in order of installation) and I don’t manually sort apps much.

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I think it’s generally called ‘global search’, and I think Palm/WebOS started it, (I like to take opportunities to plug the best OS to-date so far). It’s very handy. I’m not enough of a dev to do it, but I sense that it wouldn’t be difficult …

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Thank you, I updated the subject to include that while keeping the original one in brackets with a question mark in case it’s helpful for people who don’t know the word. I don’t think either KISS Launcher or iOS names it (unless it’s Spotlight or something similar Apple-specific).

It looks like there were at least two threads on this at TJC:

https://together.jolla.com/question/1286/search-global/

https://together.jolla.com/question/61161/wiki-poll-would-you-like-to-have-global-search/

i do support that. just wanted to create a thread on that, after search for audio recorder for 2 mins in my launcher :slight_smile:
and i have only one page + 12 apps

I only recently made a comment on that issue on the Openrepos page of the launcher app “takeoff”. This app could probably extended easily by an" interactive mode" since it includes a search function and the launch mechanism already.
Just a guess.
There used to be an arm32 app in the official jolla store but it’s broken and the developer doesn’t seem to show any further interest.

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Hello,

It’s something that I also miss, I tried to start an application, but lack of knowledge I didn’t get a correct way to start the apps.

My App, had a very primitive list of applications, taking all the .desktop files from the “ApplicationsLocation” parsing all the .desktop files, to extract icon (not working in most of the apps) and the name of the application.

But I get stuck trying to launch the application, I look at the storeman source code, and also investigated about the lipstick how to lunch it, but I didn’t found any way working, and I ended discarting it.

If somebody wishes to help or have the knowledge, maybe I can try to finish it.

Jaume.

[Edit]
I just check the code, build and runed it, and seems working, all apps launch!

Problems:

  • Icons not working
  • You can start an app multiple times

But maybe, I can try to publish the code when I’ve got 5 minutes, and the builds, that way maybe we are lucky and somebody can start helping?

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Hello,

If anybody is interessed, here is the project:

You can find the downloads here:

When I will have time, I will try to submit into chum, and do some improvements…

I hope this app will be usefull.

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Seems that somebody helped, and I already have a build in CHUM, It’s pending to be accepted into test branch.

I will keep this up to date!

(Also, in the next weeks, I wish to add some small improvements)

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The mostly excellent app SearchNemo also have app search. Unfortunately the inbuilt app launcher doesn’t work so SearchNemo could use some dev attention. Error says “xgd-open could not be found”.
I also couldn’t find a aarch64 build, so maybe I did that myself. :confused:

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I didn’t know, but It seems to be build with v2.1 the last version, I expect it will require some work to make it work with something newer…

I don’t have a lot of time, but maybe I can help if you try to build a newer version of that app.

It actually builds out of the box on latest sdk, and it installs and run as expected, except it doesn’t launch apps from the search results.

I am not a developer and my coding skills are way too limited for me to fix something like this.
Anyway, this is a great app and It deserves to be fixed.

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I just took a look, it should be pretty easy to fix I think. I will try to get time for test it, fix it and create a P/R, and maybe I can try to push it into chum too…

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That would be fantastic. I would gladly help testing, if wanted.

Disable Sandboxing and xdg-open starts working.

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Yes, somebody already did that, it was just me using an old source. A new build is now working as expected.

Quick launch is already available to download and install in chum.

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And thanks to @jsingla, also SearchNemo is available in Chum. :+1:

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I am not seeing Quick Launch in Chum and SearchNemo seems to not detect any Android apps? Xperia 10 II, SailfishOS 4.5.0.19 Struven ketju.

You’ll have to configure profile settings in SearchNemo, to make it find android apps.
Set profile Apps and go to “Current profile setup” in pulley menu.
Tap the Whitelist/Blacklist directories and pull down menu to “Add/Modify directories”.
Go to /home/Defaultuser/.local (show hidden directories in pulley menu)/share and long tap “applications”. Add to whitelist.

Hope I got it all right.

And yes, Quick Launch is in Chum. Just search for “quick”

1 Like