Open Radar

 
Summary:
When searching for an item in Spotlight on the iPhone with iOS 8.1 you can start typing the name of an app, contact or something else you’d like to find quickly.  When typing a partial string (say “AppNam”) it will show sensible results, including results called “AppName”.  However if you then type the “e” the results will disappear and often never re-appear.  That makes no sense!

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install an app such as the very fine SyncSpace
2. Because it’s undoubtedly buried in a folder somewhere, bring up Spotlight to try and find it
3. Type the app name minus the last letter: “SyncSpac” and see the app appear in the search results
4. Type the last letter of the name, so that the search field now contains “SyncSpace”

Expected Results:
After typing the exact full name of the app, I expect it to keep showing the app in the results list

Actual Results:
The now-even-better-matching result disappears from the results list!  It does seem to re-appear if you want about 3-5 seconds.
This isn’t always limited to just the last character.  It sometimes happens if you just type one more character of whatever you are looking for.  The results just disappear even though you’ve more finely refined the search to include the same item that is already appearing.  This is bad because when typing a search, we don’t usually know how much of the name needs to be typed in order to find the item, so our fingers automatically type the whole name.  Then when we see the item appear in the list we try to select it, but often it then disappears right out from under our finger, even though the search time matches exactly!  So frustrating, don’t you think?

Regression:
It seems to occur more reliably after a restart or when searching for something that hasn’t been searched for recently.

Notes:
Here’s a video of it happening  https://www.dropbox.com/sc/cox19ih58lsjrnz/AAC6QFXmY0Sh-4gPhTNr_keHa