Created attachment 7803 Proposed patch When appfinder is expanded, it takes two enter presses to launch the top most app, the first key press will only change the focus to the tree/icon view, so the first becomes selected. The attached patch accomplishes the desired results by selecting the first app as the user types, and clear the selection if the search entry is cleared.
I can confirm that the patch does what it should and I consider this a really nice workflow improvement. One button execution instead of two - very nice!
Andre Miranda referenced this bugreport in commit af6c37eba8f9aa47667cf608284ac47bf8213003 When expanded, launch apps with single enter press (Bug #14469) https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-appfinder/commit?id=af6c37eba8f9aa47667cf608284ac47bf8213003