Tab S9 Ultra Search in apps (physical keyboard)

[Ophion]

I just received my new Tab S9 Ultra and Keyboard Cover. Really beautiful device, but there's one thing driving me mad:

when I hit the search button on the keyboard, the app folder opens. Fine. Now I expect to be able to type away to find the app I want to launch.
but what happens is that a random folder is selected...

I have to tap into the search bar on top, before I can type anything.

This certainly can't be working as designed, is there any configuration I can change?

I was expecting something like the spotlight function known from a competitor, but as it is right now, every workflow is crippled by having to click into that search bar every single time.

Any help greatly appreciated, as I'd really like to love this device, despite several Android-specific shortcomings.

[Members_DHcaaDB]

Yeah, I'm surprised that there aren't more complaints about this. If you don't want to lift your hands off the physical keyboard, you could press shift-tab twice for the focus to move to the search bar, I wish it would just default to that (or at least that it was customizeable). 

[Ctux]

This seems to be a bug in the latest updates to OneUI. I used to press it and it opened the default assistant app but since the update it now opens the app screen like you're experiencing. Did you find a solution to this? It was great how it used to be but a useless button now.

[Edward458]

How is this still an issue 2 years later? Whats the point of a search button if it doesn't search.

[Ophion]

This seems to be broken by design. Meanwhile I've travelled through an iPad an am on a S10 Tablet, behavior is still the same.
I sort of get around it by using Sesame and assigning it to a shortcut (cmd + J in my case).
Maybe it'll be sorted out with Android 15, but I won't get my hopes too high.