diff --git a/share/functions/__fish_print_apt_packages.fish b/share/functions/__fish_print_apt_packages.fish
index 7e014aa50..424901152 100644
--- a/share/functions/__fish_print_apt_packages.fish
+++ b/share/functions/__fish_print_apt_packages.fish
@@ -7,28 +7,44 @@ function __fish_print_apt_packages
             return
     end
 
-    type -q -f apt-cache || return 1
     if not set -q _flag_installed
-        # Do not generate the cache as apparently sometimes this is slow.
-        # http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=547550
-        # (It is safe to use `sed -r` here as we are guaranteed to be on a GNU platform
-        # if apt-cache was found.)
-        # Uses the UTF-8/ASCII record separator (0x1A) character.
-        #
-        # Note: This can include "Description:" fields which we need to include,
-        # "Description-en_GB" (or another locale code) fields which we need to include
-        # as well as "Description-md5" fields which we absolutely do *not* want to include
-        # The regex doesn't allow numbers, so unless someone makes a hash algorithm without a number in the name,
-        # we're safe. (yes, this should absolutely have a better format).
-        #
-        # aptitude has options that control the output formatting, but is orders of magnitude slower
-        #
-        # sed could probably do all of the heavy lifting here, but would be even less readable
-        apt-cache --no-generate show '.*'(commandline -ct)'.*' 2>/dev/null | sed -r '/^(Package|Description-?[a-zA-Z_]*):/!d;s/Package: (.*)/\1\t/g;s/Description-?[^:]*: (.*)/\1\x1a\n/g' | string join "" | string replace --all --regex \x1a+ \n | uniq
+        if test (string length (commandline -ct)) -lt 4
+            # Only print prefix matches for shorter search strings
+            __fish_apt_print_matches (commandline -ct)'.*'
+        else
+            __fish_apt_print_matches '.*'(commandline -ct)'.*'
+        end
         return 0
     else
         set -l packages (dpkg --get-selections | string replace -fr '(\S+)\s+install' "\$1" | string match -e (commandline -ct))
-        apt-cache --no-generate show $packages 2>/dev/null | sed -r '/^(Package|Description-?[a-zA-Z_]*):/!d;s/Package: (.*)/\1\t/g;s/Description-?[^:]*: (.*)/\1\x1a\n/g' | string join "" | string replace --all --regex \x1a+ \n | uniq
+        __fish_apt_print_matches $packages
         return 0
     end
 end
+
+function __fish_apt_print_matches
+    type -q -f apt-cache || return 1
+
+    # Do not generate the cache as apparently this sometimes be very slow.
+    # http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=547550
+    # (It is safe to use `sed -r` here as we are guaranteed to be on a GNU platform
+    # if apt-cache was found.)
+    # Uses the UTF-8/ASCII record separator (0x1A) character.
+    #
+    # Note: This can include "Description:" fields which we need to include,
+    # "Description-en_GB" (or another locale code) fields which we need to include
+    # as well as "Description-md5" fields which we absolutely do *not* want to include
+    # The regex doesn't allow numbers, so unless someone makes a hash algorithm without a number in the name,
+    # we're safe. (yes, this should absolutely have a better format).
+    #
+    # aptitude has options that control the output formatting, but is orders of magnitude slower
+    #
+    # We limit the number of results generated by `apt-cache` directly (prior to string manipulation
+    # and deduplication) because it is the bottleneck; since we are limiting before more filtering,
+    # we use a more generous limit than we otherwised would have. We don't use `string join`/`string
+    # match` here because of excessive buffering.
+    # The limit used was experimentally derived by attempting to balance `apt-cache` runtime against
+    # the number of valid results omitted by reducing the limit for a variety of search types.
+    # `sed` could probably do all of the heavy lifting here, but would be even less readable.
+    apt-cache --no-generate show $argv 2>/dev/null | head -n2500 | sed -r '/^(Package|Description-?[a-zA-Z_]*):/!d;s/Package: (.*)/\1\t/g;s/Description-?[^:]*: (.*)/\1\x1a\n/g' | tr -d \n | tr \x1a+ \n | uniq
+end