Repository navigation
Search auto-complete is not case insensitive #2519
Description
Describe the bug
Certain shared drives, mounted file systems, cloud drives, are case sensitive. Search auto-complete stops working once you type in a directory.
Area of issue
Start menu
To reproduce
For example, if the folder is: X:\Files\Private\stuff, once you type "x:\fil", it works to show "X:\Files" but once you get to "x:\files\p", it will not longer attempt to autocomplete the directory "Private". It behaves as if the directory doesn't exist. Even if you choose the found directory "X:\Files" from the found search result and try to add on to the found directory path.
It doesn't matter if the following are in the search box, the results are always "No items match your search":
- x:\files\p
- X:\Files\P
- X:\Files\p
Expected behavior
I expect that when typing the lowercase "p" in Private, it will complete the directory.
Open-Shell version
4.4.198
Windows version
Windows 11
Additional context
No response
Activity
ge0rdi commentedon Aug 27, 2026
I don't think this is a bug.
It worked like that for ages, because Windows file-system was case-insensitive for ages.
Having the search case-sensitive is change of the program behavior, so I marked this as feature request.
Most likely there will have to be new setting added that will enable case-sensitive searches.
Eventually, maybe we could apply case-sensitivity only for results that come from case-sensitive sources (but I'm not sure it will be always possible to distinguish it).