Block or shortcode standalone search?

Hello @absoluteweb, thanks for your interest in Scry Search. I will do my best to address all your questions here. Let me know if I misunderstood anything.

• Right now, Scry Search does not include any custom blocks or shortcodes to replace they built-in WordPress search blocks. This is what allows the plugin to operate with zero frontend changes to the site: it intercepts search queries regardless of where they come from, and uses Meilisearch to find results. To limit a particular search bar to only search pages, as opposed to searching all indexes, we do plan on supporting a url parameter post_type=<enter_post_type_here> in the future. This is how most default search bars from plugins like WooCommerce implement their search filters by default, which would allow Scry Search to work seamlessly with them. Would this solve the problem you mentioned first, about having a particular search bar only search pages?
• As for Scry Search’s autosuggest filling in in tandem with the other plugin’s auto suggest, we have a solution for that. In the “Search Settings” tab for Scry Search, there is a setting at the bottom called “Class Selector”. You enter a class of your choosing into this box. Then, you can apply this class to all search forms on your site that you want to use Scry Search auto suggest on, and auto suggest will only apply to those forms. So you can leave that class name off of the form from your screenshot above, and then Scry Search autosuggest will not appear there, removing the “double autosuggest” issue you were having.
• As for your last concern, which seems directly related to your first one (search bars on one page only searching through pages, search bars on another only searching products, etc.), we will get to work on publishing a change to address this asap. We will first release support for searching indexes based on a url parameter, and if that does not fully meet your needs, then we will begin looking in to developing a custom block/shortcode. I appreciate this piece of feedback in particular, because we want to develop this plugin directly in response to user feedback!

We appreciate your interest in switching over to our plugin. If you are willing to work with us by providing feedback through the development process, we will be able to publish patches that address your needs. Expect to see that initial patch within 1-2 weeks, and then we can take a look at whether a fully custom Scry Search block+shortcode is in order. Thanks!

You are welcome! I will answer your questions in order:

Firstly, the url parameter: many well known plugins that supply custom search blocks use a url parameter to specify which post types to search. WooCommerce, for instance, supplies a Product Searchbar that, when a search is made from it, sets post_type=product in the url. Our plan is to support that in our plugin. That way, our plugin will work out of the box with plugins that follow the WooCommerce pattern. To implement that on your own search forms, all you would have to do is create one or more <input type="hidden" name="post_type[]" value="post type here"> inside the search form you want to specify a specific index to search, and then that search bar will only search that index or set of indexes. And yes, this will work with auto-suggest. Does that make sense?

Secondly, I understand, that makes sense! We cannot deactivate the auto suggest from the other plugin from within ours, so you will have to deactivate the other plugin’s autosuggest from within their settings. You may be able to add a custom code snippet that deactivates it if the plugin doesn’t give an option to deactivate it.

Let me know if you have any more questions. Thanks!