On my desktop PC, the delay is not very noticeable, but on my laptop, which is slower than the desktop PC, there is a like one second delay between I type something in the search bar of the overview/application listing screen (the thing that shows up when you press the Windows/Meta/Super key) and the results appear.
The problem is that the results appear at once, not progressively. That is, the application row at the top, settings match, Unicode character hits, etc all appear at once after a blank screen. In most cases, when I type something in the search bar, I am searching for an application. In my case, there aren’t even that many applications in the listing, maybe about 100. Text searching 100 items should be instant even on a slower CPU.
Isn’t it better if Gnome shows application results first without delay, and then add other more time-consuming search results like settings or Unicode characters?
Application search results are instantaneous for me on Arch Linux with GNOME 43.2. Other search results mostly as well though some continue to populate for a fraction of a second after application search results are already shown. That’s on a 12 year old PC.
What OS and GNOME version are you on? Are you using any extensions—try if disabling all extensions makes a difference and if so work your way back to which extensions causes the problem.
I can confirm this as well. when searching on my relatively new laptop (intel 11th gen) I can still see a lag between when I search and when the first result appears. it’s not long but it’s very frustrating and the whole shell is blocked in that second or two.
kinda unrelated but the only other time where she’ll is blocked is when I log in, the screen goes gray while gnome shell is loading. I could recommend a basic spinner or a nice animation that could make it more engaging
Manjaro, which is Arch-based. The laptop is an 7th-gen i3 and using an NVME (read speed is about 2000MB/s), so it is not because of slow disk IO. As far as I guess no enabled extension deals with search results.
I disabled “Application search” altogether, and now installed app results is displayed a lot faster.
I don’t know how it internally works, but my guess is that Gnome’s search is probably not showing the installed app results until at least some initial “Application search” has begun. I know that it does not wait until all “Application search” is done, because I can see more “Application search” getting appended, but definitely, there is a time difference from my typing letters until installed apps appear at the top, depending on whether “Application search” is enabled or not. What I want is Gnome doing “Application search” after installed app list is shown.
Nah, animation won’t do for me. I hate waiting, even for a second. If this behaviour does not change, I think I am going to use a third-party application menu that can show instant installed-app search result, instead of using Gnome’s search.