File navigation → Filter by fuzzy words not just numbers

[FroZen_X]

Hello everyone,

 

currently when I navigate through my Folders i usually tend to speed the process up by typing the folder name.

When I'm within a folder and wanna select a certain file, i usually type a part of that particular file name. With numbers this works perfectly

shown in the following example:

 

Test Files:

 

 

Search:

 

 

 

As you see even tho the name is "11_12" i yet can search via "1112" which is awesome. Fuzzy works in this case.

However here is the same with a string, which doesn’t work:

 

 

What work however is when you add a wildcard like "*":

 

 

I would love to see an option to add fuzzy search for strings too, as it’s a pain when you jump back several times to a folder 

by using Alfreds "Previous Path" function and you have to add "*" again. Sadly Alfred doesn’t save the previous Filter you used.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Frozen

[deanishe]

1 hour ago, FroZen_X said:

I would love to see an option to add fuzzy search for strings too

 

I think Alfred's navigation mode could do with an overhaul in a few regards, tbh, and a fuzzier search would be a large step in the right direction.

 

As in your example, it's pretty common to avoid spaces in filenames (for various reasons), and that does not combine well with Alfred's word-starts-with search (at least, not with Alfred's current concept of what constitutes a word).

 

The main drawback of fuzzy search is that it's not great (slow, too many matches) with large datasets. That doesn't really apply to navigation mode, as directories very rarely contain several thousand files and subdirectories.

 

[FroZen_X]

1 hour ago, deanishe said:

I think Alfred's navigation mode could do with an overhaul in a few regards, tbh, and a fuzzier search would be a large step in the right direction.

 

It would make many things easier. Also recalling used filters when using "previous path" would be nice to see as suggested.

 

1 hour ago, deanishe said:

The main drawback of fuzzy search is that it's not great (slow, too many matches) with large datasets. That doesn't really apply to navigation mode, as directories very rarely contain several thousand files and subdirectories.

 

I totally agree with that. Like usually you search via file filter or have a list filter to directly get to a folder and from there 10-30 or more Files appear.

Having a fuzzy search would make it a lot easier to get quickly to your file in a certain Folder. Especially when you call back to that folder several times.

[Andrew]

The main reason I avoid full fuzzy in the rest of Alfred is performance and result noise, but I agree with what's said here.

 

I'll look at improving this!