Alfred doesn't always respond the first time

[Gary King]

If I'm looking for a folder, then I open Alfred and hit space, then the folder name.

 

But sometimes it gets "stuck" and just has one result (I forget what the result was; it says something like "Open folder", just a generic name like that).

 

I have to close Alfred (Escape key) and open it again to make it work.

 

So, it seems to get stuck, or stall, every once in a while.

 

Anyone know why this happens, and how I can fix it?

[Andrew]

If I'm looking for a folder, then I open Alfred and hit space, then the folder name.

 

But sometimes it gets "stuck" and just has one result (I forget what the result was; it says something like "Open folder", just a generic name like that).

 

I have to close Alfred (Escape key) and open it again to make it work.

 

So, it seems to get stuck, or stall, every once in a while.

 

Anyone know why this happens, and how I can fix it?

 

This could possibly be an indexing issue. Try using the "Rebuild OS X Metadata" button in Alfred's Advanced preferences. Follow the instructions carefully. Indexing can take over an hour to complete but should fix these sorts of issues.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[moving to help sub-forum]

[Gary King]

If it's an indexing issue, then shouldn't it NEVER be able to find the file? Because, after starting up Alfred three times, it can finally find the file.

[Vero]

If it's an indexing issue, then shouldn't it NEVER be able to find the file? Because, after starting up Alfred three times, it can finally find the file.

 

If you reindex, you'll find that results are found and they're found much faster.

 

It's comparable to a library; you're looking for a book and it's likely that it's somewhere in the room, but it takes a long time to find it through the jumble. Reindexing sorts every book back in its place, ensuring your results are found in the OS X metadata and returned to Alfred instantly.

[Gary King]

Okay thanks, I have run the command (but did NOT checkmark the option to remove the Spotlight V100 folder). So far, so good, but I'll have to give it a few days to see if the problem occurs again or not.

[Gary King]

Hi, sorry, but items still take a few tries before they show up. What I mean is, if I want to open a folder called "Documents" for instance, I open Alfred, type "space" then "Documents". And yet only "Open File..." appears as an option. So I close the Alfred window, wait 10 seconds, then open it again, then search, and it's fine.

 

Would perhaps running the Metadata re-scan, but with the option to remove the Spotlight V100 file, be a good thing to try now? Or is the problem related elsewhere?

[Gary King]

Could the problem be related to my external drive? I've got this as my external drive. It runs at 5400 RPM. The drive constantly falls asleep when it is not in use, which I like since it keeps it quiet.

 

But could that also mean that Alfred takes a long time to show files because it's waiting for the drive to load? Ideally, if that's the case, then Alfred should not wait for the external drive to load its contents, and instead it should show contents that it has available at the moment. Then when the external drive loads, it can then refresh what it's showing.

 

Thoughts?

[Andrew]

Could the problem be related to my external drive? I've got this as my external drive. It runs at 5400 RPM. The drive constantly falls asleep when it is not in use, which I like since it keeps it quiet.

 

But could that also mean that Alfred takes a long time to show files because it's waiting for the drive to load? Ideally, if that's the case, then Alfred should not wait for the external drive to load its contents, and instead it should show contents that it has available at the moment. Then when the external drive loads, it can then refresh what it's showing.

 

Thoughts?

 

Alfred shows results to you the instant they are returned to him from OS X's metadata server, so there could indeed be a pause in this returning file results to Alfred. Try typing in a search term, but instead of trying a few times, just wait with Alfred visible and see if file results turn up after some time.

 

If this is causing the issue, you can turn off sleeping of hard drives in OS X's Energy Saver preferences. You could also try removing this hard drive from your default search scope and using a separate workflow file filter for when you specifically want to search the external drive.

[Gary King]

I typed in a search term, and although results were not returned immediately, they eventually appeared after about 5-10 seconds. I appreciate your other suggestions too. I think I'll just wait for results to appear for now, because sometimes I don't exactly recall where a file is located.

[Gary King]

Is it possible to instead have Alfred ignore the external drive when it hasn't loaded up yet, and immediately show me results from just the current drive? And then once the external drive has loaded up, then include those results in the current results?

[Gary King]

Waiting for Alfred to load up results from my external drives was taking too long (5 seconds each time I opened up Alfred), so I decided to remove my external drive from the default search scope, and create a new workflow to search just my external volume instead. I'll see how that works out. Hopefully, the default file search using an apostrophe ' won't be slowed down anymore, now that it no longer has to interface with my external drive at all.