How to search for a game in Games by Zaweba

Eighty-two games is a generous collection, and generous collections have one drawback: the game you want is not always the one in front of you. Games by Zaweba answers that with a search box that sits over the library and filters the games as you type.

You can click in the box, or press Ctrl+F from the library and start typing straight away. With each letter the library narrows to the games that match, so by the time you have typed a few characters the one you want is usually alone on the screen. There is no separate results page and no button to press. You type, the shelves thin out, and you click the tile.

When searching beats browsing

Browsing the shelves is lovely when you have time and no particular game in mind. Searching is better when you know exactly what you want. If you sat down to play a quick round of draughts, there is no reason to scroll past the card games to reach it. A few letters do the job.

Search also helps when you half remember a game. Many of the games have friendly names that describe how they play, so typing a word you associate with a game is often enough to find it. If you are not sure of the full name, start with the part you are confident about and let the filter do the rest.

It is handy on a shared computer too. When someone else has been playing, Recently played will be full of their games rather than yours. A quick search takes you past all of that.

Three ways back to a game you know

The search box works best alongside two other parts of the library. The first is the Favourites star. Marking a game as a favourite puts it in its own view, so the handful of games you play most are always gathered together. The second is the Recently played shelf, which keeps the games you have opened lately near the top.

Together these give you a quick route for every situation. For the game you play every day, Favourites is one click away. For the game you were playing last night, Recently played will have it. For anything else among the 82, Ctrl+F and a couple of letters will bring it up. Used like this, you should almost never need to scroll through the whole collection.

Making searching a habit

The quickest way to use the library is to keep your hands near the keyboard. Open the app, press Ctrl+F, type and click. It takes a couple of seconds, which is less time than it takes to read the shelf names.

A few small habits make it smoother. Type fewer letters rather than more, since the filter only needs enough to tell games apart. If nothing appears, check for a typing slip before assuming a game is missing. And when you clear the box, the full library comes back, so you can go straight from searching to browsing without starting again.

If you find yourself searching for the same game every evening, that is a good sign it belongs in your Favourites. Star it once and it will be waiting for you next time without any typing at all.

How search fits the rest of the app

Search is a small part of Games by Zaweba, but it shapes how the whole collection feels. A large library is only pleasant if you can get round it easily, and the combination of shelves for browsing, Favourites and Recently played for habit, and search for everything else keeps it that way. The tiles you find still show your plays, wins and best score, so a search result tells you how you have been getting on as well as where the game is.

Once you are in a game, the bar at the top takes you back to All games whenever you like, and the search is there again when you return.