Need better discoverability for plugins

Feature Requests Website Features
#1

As a roblox developer it is too hard to find the right type of plugin you’re looking for. Currently, the search results are purely based on the name and without any sort of fuzzy search. See the following example:

I wanted to find a nice plugin for splitting parts. I used the search terms:

  • cut brick, slice brick, split brick, cut part, slice part, split part, cut block, slice block, split block

None of these returned what I was looking for.

I later happened upon someone mentioning what I was looking for in a devforum thread:
https://www.roblox.com/library/143152131/Brick-Cutter

Frustratingly, cut brick does not even return this brick cutter even though I happened to match the base words once.

Thank you

15 Likes
#2

Thanks for this feedback Maelstronomer. We’ll pass this on to the plugins team who are actively working on improving discoverability.

11 Likes
#3

To piggyback off of this. This is also seemingly an issue with searching as a whole across Roblox.

For example: when searching in the Avatar Shop in All Categories, when I query “White Sparkle Time Fedora” none of the results are the White Sparkle Time Fedora (even if I look ahead a few pages it’s not there).

Screenshot of All Categories Search

chrome_ccuPHvNl4g
chrome_ccuPHvNl4g1920×977 162 KB

Note: I am not showing all 60 results.

However, if I search in Collectibles it’s the first result. This is a win, but the other sparkle time fedoras (at least in my opinion) should come right after it. The Panda Knit hat comes before the other sparkle time fedoras do.

Screenshot of Collectibles Search

chrome_3ONc14DlCE
chrome_3ONc14DlCE1920×979 194 KB

Note: I am not showing all 60 results.

Edit

Edit: As of now toolbox plugin search is curated. So this is most likely why there was no result. Thanks to metatablecat for bring this to my attention.

This is also an issue with the Toolbox and its searching functionality. To even further corroborate Maelstronomer’s point, I searched for a plugin exactly by name and got zero results.

Screenshots of Toolbox Plugin Search

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For as long as I can remember the searching across the Roblox platform as a whole has been fairly lackluster, and sometimes outright frustrating. I really hope any improvements made to plugins discoverability will extend to all other facets of searching as well.

4 Likes
#4

The Toolbox Plugins use a curated list, and dont return all of them.

I still agree with the point that the Search API that Roblox utilises isn’t very intelligent when it comes to fuzzy searching.

3 Likes