I noticed this when switching from GNOME 45 to 47 so not sure whether this changed in 46 or 47, but before the App search used to consider comments in application desktop files, which I used in several cases to get kind of keyword-based search results.
Does anybody know whether removing that functionality was an active design decision or whether this is just a regression?
It’s intentional: gdesktopappinfo: Do not search Comment field (794b18df) · Commits · GNOME / GLib · GitLab
To properly add keywords for an application you can use the Keywords field of the .desktop file: Recognized desktop entry keys | Desktop Entry Specification
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It was an intentional change. Quoting the commit in question:
The Comment field provides a user-visible description of the app,
which usually contains generic words (“and”, “or”, “not”, “is”, …)
that add noise when used for search.It made some sense to match against the field as a fallback for
Keywords, before that key was well established. However that key
has been around for years now, so hopefully every app where additional
terms are helpful uses it by now.With that, the downside of added noise outweighs the benefit, so
it’s time to stop matching on comments.
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@fmuellner @skeller very helpful!
Thank you both!