Mostly inexperienced DM (have run a small handful of games over many years. Coming from mostly D&D 3.5 > Pathfinder 1e. I tried 5e and cant stand it, I am enjoying Pathfinder 2e but I am having trouble understanding how "searching" works. It looks like it isn't a check from the text unless I missed something. So for example if there is a hidden box in a room or a hidden trap and they say they are searching the room, what happens? They just find whatever it is automatically? I feel like I am misreading. Im still wrapping my head around the idea of Exploration mode vs downtime mode vs combat mode, I guess, because a lot of the stuff that they would do in exploration doesnt seem to have checks.
My reasoning I guess is that it seems a very unperceptive PC would just automatically find anything in a given room without any checks by "searching" and in reality I feel like the PC could search for hours and hours and still not notice something subtle. Am I wrong here?