Contacts don't show up after Alfred open for a while

[jroz]

Running Alfred v 2.4 with PowerPack on OS X 10.9.4

 

- After launching Alfred, I can search for contacts as expected (e.g., type "Dad", first result is OS X contact Dad). 

- After some period of time (a day, perhaps?) contacts stop appearing (i.e., type "Dad", get no result for OS X contacts).

- Relaunch Alfred, can see contacts as expected again.

 

I tried resetting privacy settings and forcing Alfred to re-request contacts access from OS X. The problem persists.

[Vero]

Running Alfred v 2.4 with PowerPack on OS X 10.9.4

 

- After launching Alfred, I can search for contacts as expected (e.g., type "Dad", first result is OS X contact Dad). 

- After some period of time (a day, perhaps?) contacts stop appearing (i.e., type "Dad", get no result for OS X contacts).

- Relaunch Alfred, can see contacts as expected again.

 

I tried resetting privacy settings and forcing Alfred to re-request contacts access from OS X. The problem persists.

 

Alfred simply presents you the Contacts made available by OS X in its Contacts API, so if there are changes from one day to another, are there any third-party apps (like Cobook or contact syncing tools) on your Mac that may be changing your contacts data? Alternatively, are you contacts stored away from your main drive and possibly only available when you've got an external/network drive connected?

 

There is an alternative way to get your contacts, so if you can't figure out why contacts are periodically unavailable, you can go to Alfred's preferences, under Features > Contacts > Advanced and check the box next to "Use Spotlight metadata for searching contacts".

[jroz]

Alfred simply presents you the Contacts made available by OS X in its Contacts API, so if there are changes from one day to another, are there any third-party apps (like Cobook or contact syncing tools) on your Mac that may be changing your contacts data? Alternatively, are you contacts stored away from your main drive and possibly only available when you've got an external/network drive connected?

 

There is an alternative way to get your contacts, so if you can't figure out why contacts are periodically unavailable, you can go to Alfred's preferences, under Features > Contacts > Advanced and check the box next to "Use Spotlight metadata for searching contacts".

 

- I don't use any other syncing apps, though contacts are synced with my Google account. (Still, I have a second macbook that has no issues with this same confiruation).

- Contacts are stored locally and synced with google server. There shouldn't be an issue with external / network drive connectivity. (The issue also goes away by simply restarting alfred, so it doesn't seem to be an availability problem.

- I know of that solution, but it changes how Alfred shows contacts (I can no longer browse them using only Alfred; Alfred will open the Contacts app every time)

[Vero]

- I don't use any other syncing apps, though contacts are synced with my Google account. (Still, I have a second macbook that has no issues with this same confiruation).

- Contacts are stored locally and synced with google server. There shouldn't be an issue with external / network drive connectivity. (The issue also goes away by simply restarting alfred, so it doesn't seem to be an availability problem.

- I know of that solution, but it changes how Alfred shows contacts (I can no longer browse them using only Alfred; Alfred will open the Contacts app every time)

 

In your Contacts app, under what header do your contacts appear? If they're under "On My Mac" and "iCloud", they should definitely be found by OS X and Alfred.

 

With Google's syncing, it's possible that the data is being stored temporarily or improperly, so it only becomes available on an ad hoc basis.

 

Try adding one or two new contacts under the "On My Mac" header in Contacts and see over the next few days whether these are consistently found. If that's the case, the issue with your Google-synced contacts is likely to be outside of Alfred's control.

[jroz]

In your Contacts app, under what header do your contacts appear? If they're under "On My Mac" and "iCloud", they should definitely be found by OS X and Alfred.

 

With Google's syncing, it's possible that the data is being stored temporarily or improperly, so it only becomes available on an ad hoc basis.

 

Try adding one or two new contacts under the "On My Mac" header in Contacts and see over the next few days whether these are consistently found. If that's the case, the issue with your Google-synced contacts is likely to be outside of Alfred's control.

They appear under Google > All Contacts, which is the same as on my Macbook air (where I haven't experienced this problem). 

 

This computer is, however, managed by the company for which I work. Is it possible that there's some setting that's causing contact access to be turned off periodically?

[Vero]

They appear under Google > All Contacts, which is the same as on my Macbook air (where I haven't experienced this problem). 

 

This computer is, however, managed by the company for which I work. Is it possible that there's some setting that's causing contact access to be turned off periodically?

 

Have you tried adding one or two contacts under the "On My Mac" header in Contacts to see whether these contacts are consistently found? This will confirm that, for normal contacts, there are no issues with them being found.

 

Based on the developer documentation produced by Apple, "You can only search the user’s local Address Book database, not remote directories such as CardDAV or Exchange." As such, your Google contacts need to be fully synched locally to be searchable. There might be a subtle difference in how you've set up your two Macs, which means that one is fully synched and the other isn't.

 

When checking the box to "Use Spotlight metadata for searching contacts", Alfred uses the metadata instead of the Contacts API referred to above. It's possible (but not guaranteed) that your Google contacts might be found that way instead. Hope this helps

 

Edited to add: I'll now move this to Noted, as we constantly keep an eye on how we can improve the reliability of Contacts when using third-party tools like Google Contacts, but as per the Apple documentation, we have limited access to the data from these contacts at this time.

[jroz]

So after playing around, I think the problem might have been the manner in which the account was added.

 

Instead of adding a "Google" account I think you need to add a CardDav account:

1) Go to add other accounts

2) Add a carddav account per google's instructions online.

 

It's a particularly odd glitch because the contacts appear in Alfred and then disappear. But hopefully this is the solution!