Frankly, I use the app grid quite rarely. I start or switch to applications from the dash or by using the search in overview: enter first letters of desired appplication and hit enter when application is highlited.
The only reason to specifically open app grid is to browse or search for applications.
Thus it feels strange and inconsistent to me that search in app grid offers as result basically the same than the search in overview: files, contacts and yes, apps.
In my opinion in would make more sense and would offer a more consistent user experience if search in app grid would only show applications as search result.
Thank you for your consideration and your work on this great DE.
As for consistency, someone might say that in overview, it should only search for open windows and applications in the dashboard, and everything else should be searched elsewhere.
The thing is the search experience is meant to be global.
I kind of disagree with your remarks on the search beahviour in activities ovreview.
As the name activities ovreview indicates, this is the place where things happen in Gnome. Its like the root level and I am totally fine that search finds “everything” in activities overview. Plus you can go to the search tab in the gnome-settings and choose the search-providers of your choice and thus influence search behaviour in activities overview.
Though I have to admit that it is kind of strange that you cannot perform the same search in a seperate window. Because the second you switch to an open window to check something (lets say while search is still performing and I am impatient) and return to the overview your search results are gone and you have to reperform the exact same search. That happens alot to me.
Now I come to your search experience is meant global point.
That makes totally sense ont the top level that is the activities overview.
My analogy is the recursive search in nautilus. In home directory, search finds all files in home directory and child directories. But a level deeper in Documents folder, lets say, search wont find files of a parent directory.
In my perception, overview and app grid are not on the same level. Yes, you can access app grid from desktop by pressing super+A or doublepress super, but the basic way seems to be to open overview and then click on the app grid logo in the dash. For me, this indicates that app-grid is a level deeper than the overview itself.
Home Directory
|–> Documents
Activies Overview
|–> App Grid
That is why I think it would be more consisten if search in app grid would find apps only.
But I might also just misunderstand the way the Gnome desktop is meant to function.
For me, the Activities view has 3 rows: Search, View (overview/app grid), Dash. You can see this point of view with the transition between the overview and the app grid (there is the maximizing and minimizing of workspaces).
However, regardless of the point of view, I wonder why you are proposing this. Is it just something you think about from a design point of view, or is it because you encountered a specific issue?