New entity selector and exact matches

[bsevigny]

Describe the enhancement

The new entity selector is great but it make selecting an exact match much more difficult than it used to. When typing the name of an entity, I often have to scroll down a hundred or so of entities (alphabetically sorted) to find the one I exactly typed. This is annoying. The old entity selector was prioritizing similar or exact matches and it made things faster. Would it be possible to have a compromise between those two?

Use cases

Typing an exact entity name often result in a list of hundreds of entities I have to scroll through to find the one I typed.

Visual examples

No response

Anything else?

No response

[borpin]

Agree, if you type in an exact match you don't want numerous approximate matches.

[renarena]

its also not able to search without spaces anymore.
I could type trvl to find trv living room, now trvl finds nothing.

[tyron]

An expansion to this: I believe matches with the start of the word should be ranked higher, and matches at the beginning of the device/entity name even higher. If this ranking is implemented, I believe it would also tackle the "exact match" case

Example: you type in "pl". You should see the following items in this specific order: Plug A, Media Player, Bedroom Display.

Rationale: if you search for PL you are more likely to refer to a PLug than to a disPLay.

[bsevigny]

Exact matches should be the highest rank, then starting submatches, then inner submatches , then anything else