Powertoys: Powertoys Run UX improvements

[shirkerohit]

Along with reducing the height and font size can we have list items to be shown categorically? as of now all result are shown in plain list one after another.

Proposed :

• Reduce font and UI size overall (Event the dropdown box!)
• Show items in categories.

Eg.

A search "Code" Shows result as below.

It will be more Intuitive if It were shown in categories as :

• Apps
• Files & Folders
• Others

and may be each section can have its own configuration of limit of files being shown?

[Jay-o-Way]

So basically, just like the standard Windows search. Brings us back to the question: where's the difference between them? One issue has this as a title (don't know the number though). PT Run is turning in to a copy of Search.

[rzippo]

So basically, just like the standard Windows search. Brings us back to the question: where's the difference between them? One issue has this as a title (don't know the number though). PT Run is turning in to a copy of Search.

The main reason I went looking for tools like Listary was that Search just _doesn't work_.
I cannot reliably use it to find what I want to find.

As a user, if Run turns into a copy of Search that _works_ then that's still a win.

[wazybr]

@Jay-o-Way
PT Run is much more powerful if you take it's extensibility into account. It can resolve math expressions offline, for example, use prefixes for special queries or commands, and more. If you take a look at all the improvements issues on this repo, you should have an overview of how it's shaping up to be much more powerful than Windows Search.

[shirkerohit]

@Jay-o-Way I am not sure how you are comparing the Powertoys Run tool with windows search? I mean just having options to show items categorically it becomes bing search? As said by @wazybr It's more powerful utility to run/launch command locally and what I recommended is just a UI tweak to what all we currently have and I feel nothing wrong into that.

[shirkerohit]

Also another improvement can be done like dividing result into two panes one text and other possibly a description (Preview/Summary pane) one provided by Cerebro App and below list of quick options like one provided by windows search menu context screen pane.

I feel this is a good candidate for improvement and hence opened a separate feature request here
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/4845

[rzippo]

below list of quick options like one provided by windows search menu context screen pane

This seems like my suggestion in #4657. I think the Listary way of using the context menu entries is better, it will show more actions and would seamlessly include customization to the context menu entries.

[shirkerohit]

To be very frank I Googled to see how does it works and it's nice and quick. 👍 But Here, I though of having a preview pane with possible options listed directly below preview. You can directly navigate to result item with down arrow and then to options with right arrow. Also, we can have them quick links as 'f' for file in explorer which can be again customized 😅