Vero

@simon810 Could you please follow the same steps outlined here, moving your preferences temporarily off iCloud, and ensuring you've disabled Optimised Storage?

3 hours ago, TDube said:

@Vero good - re: icloud - almost everyone uses the optimized in my mind..

@TDube It has always been a requirement to keep Optimised Storage disable in order to store Alfred's preferences on iCloud:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/advanced/sync/#always-offline

It's possible that you've now reached a point with your Mac, macOS and iCloud where it needs to start strategically moving files to online-only, resulting in these issues. 

@bob113 Did you check that your credits are still active? I believe they expire after three months from account creation, at which point you'll need to top up.

@Silas Welcome to the forum

First, could you please check whether you're using Optimised Storage on your Mac? This iCloud feature must be disabled if you'd like to use it for syncing your Alfred preferences, as enabling it means that macOS can arbitrarily decide to make your preferences online-only, making them unavailable to Alfred. 

Once you've done this, temporarily create a new sync location in your user directory under ~/Alfred/ (provided this is a local, unsynced path on your Mac) and set this as your sync folder in Alfred's advanced preferences.
 
Next, try deleting a workflow again and see if it's successfully removed when the preferences are reopened.

Let me know how you get on.

@TDube The objective of moving your preferences to that location temporarily was to establish whether your preferences were working normally outside of the sync location, which then narrows the issue you're experiencing to a syncing one.

The Diagnostics you sent now matches much better what was in your screenshot, e.g. 18 workflows matching what was in your screenshot, and current versions from the Gallery rather than older ones. 

At this stage, I would recommend making a backup of your Alfred.alfredpreferences somewhere safe, e.g. an external drive or Time Machine. You can then try moving your preferences to the sync location again and see how you get on.

Can you confirm that iCloud's Optimised Storage is disabled in your iCloud prefs? This is essential to ensure that iCloud doesn't randomly decide to put your Alfred preferences online-only, making them inaccessible to Alfred.

Let me know how you get on

@TDube I'm taking a look at the Diagnostics file you've emailed in, and it doesn't seem to match what you've shared in your screenshot. Did you send your Diagnostics from the same Mac?

Your Diagnostics show you have 17 workflows, yet in this screenshot I can count 18 within view. I can see that there are more current Gallery versions of the workflows (e.g. version 1.3.0 of the Homebrew Search workflow), whereas your Diagnostics show 'Homebrew' [1.2.8:de.chris-grieser.homebrew] as your version.

I wonder if your choice of sync mechanism is interfering with normal operation; What is the AlfredSync folder in your Documents, and what sync method do you use? It's possible that Alfred isn't able to save to it or is lacking some permissions.

The first thing I'd recommend doing is temporarily creating a new sync location in your user directory under ~/Alfred/ (provided this is a local, unsynced path on your Mac) and setting this as your sync folder in Alfred's advanced preferences.

Once you've done this, try updating one of the Gallery workflows again, and see if the arrow goes away. You can send in another Diagnostics, and I can take a look at whether it's correctly updated to the latest version.

Let me know how you get on.

@zlebandit Welcome to the forum. Could you please share your workflow (you can upload it to Dropbox or iCloud and share the link)?

If you launch Alfred's troubleshooting tool and drag in some of the files you're looking for, what does it report? You can paste the full output here so that we can also take a look.

The more details of what file types you're searching for, where they're located, etc you provide, the more easily we'll be able to help you work out how to create the right file filter for what you need

Cheers,
Vero

@noahtye Welcome to the forum.

⌃H isn't a default hotkey in Alfred, so could you open the preferences to Features > Universal Actions > General and see what hotkey you've set there?

If you've set it there, you can either change it or remove it (if you don't use Universal Actions from Finder/other apps) with backspace.

If it isn't set in that location, open your Workflows and click the three dots at the top of the sidebar. Under Display Options, show the hotkeys, which will allow you to scan down your list of workflows and see if you've set ⌃H anywhere as a hotkey.

Let me know how you get on.

@hedkase It'd be worth logging in to your OpenAI account to check that you have credit on file. The ChatGPT Plus subscription is for access through the website, API access is billed separately.

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7039783-how-can-i-access-the-chatgpt-api

Having said that, it's also worth noting that OpenAI were reporting API error issues today (March 18th) on their status page so these errors may be caused by their issues depending on your timing:

https://status.openai.com

Curious to see how easy and quick the ChatGPT / DALL-E workflow is to use? I've created a quick video introducing the workflow and its configuration.

Hope this helps you discover this most awesome workflow  

I've just published our first two videos about Alfred on YouTube

You can find our videos at https://www.youtube.com/@alfredapptv

Making the time to create more videos about Alfred is exciting, and we'd love your help getting the word out. Share, give it a like, all that good stuff! Thanks for being the best community on the internet!

You can see the ChatGPT / DALL-E workflow in action here:

And another on using and setting your fallback searches:

@scottrych The Thumbnail Navigation workflow uses both the Image and PDF views:

https://alfred.app/workflows/alfredapp/thumbnail-navigation/

You can also use the PDF View from the built-in Universal Actions where you'll see a "View in Alfred" action for relevant file types.

Alfred 5.5 is now available through the regular update channel. 

Thank you to everyone who used the beta versions and helped us test the new features. We can't wait to see how you use the new views in your own workflows

@mnin Alfred's Clipboard History feature automatically removes all formatting from content copied to the clipboard.

Are you referring to the most recent clip held in the macOS clipboard? If so, there are two ways to paste as plain text:

1. Pop up the Clipboard Viewer and choose the item from the list: It'll be pasted with all formatting stripped.
2. Set a hotkey for the template "Paste as plain text" which you'll find in Alfred's Workflows > [+] at the bottom of the sidebar > Templates > Clipboard > Paste as plain text. You can then set this hotkey to something convenient to paste the current clipboard.

If I've misunderstood your suggestion, let me know

@mikedvzo Could you please share your workflow, so that we can replicate it?

Could you also let us know which version of macOS you're using?

@macrospect If there's no crash log, Alfred isn't crashing so there's *something else* causing it to quit.

Could you please check whether you're using:

• Any third-party apps that claim to make your Mac more efficient by managing other apps (e.g. quitting them) when it believes the app is idle?
• Any Alfred workflow you might have installed or created that could be scripted to quit or restart Alfred in any way?
• Have experienced unexpected quitting behaviour from any other apps, app helpers in the menu bar, etc?

The more information you can provide on your specific Mac configuration, the more likely we'll be able to help you. 

Could you also please provide your Diagnostics file, which you can get by typing "?diagnostics" into Alfred? You can then email it to our info@ address with a reference back to this thread.

@jhawsey Welcome to the forum

Which version of macOS and Alfred are you using? Alfred isn't involved in the Mission Control window management, but if we're on the same version of macOS, I can take a look at whether there are any Mission Control prefs that can be tweaked.

@James Dunn Will they always be the same entries, e.g. first three? Or any random one?

If, for example, you want the first two Clipboard items merged with a comma between them, you could use this dynamic placeholder, which will grab the first and second from the clipboard history and paste them as one, with a comma in between.

Alfred can't read your mind so you'll need to either 1. pre-define which clipboard entries you want, or 2. manually select entries from the clipboard.

You could theoretically grab the latest 20 clipboard entries, then filter them to only keep the arguments that begin with https:// and paste those?

Please give a tangible example of what data you expect in your clipboard, how many entries need to be copied and how they need to be pasted. Once there's enough details, I'm sure the community will then be able to help you create a workflow.  

@James Dunn It depends on what else is in your clipboard, what order you want to paste content in, etc...

Do you want to take all 20 previous entries, merge them into a list and paste them at once? Or paste all 20 separately? Will there be other content in your clipboard at the time amongst the 20 URLs that need to be filtered away?

The clearer you can make your particular scenario, the more easily we'll be able to help you create your dream workflow

Cheers,
Vero

@macrospect This sounds very unusual, so will need a little more investigating on your part.

If you say Alfred "goes missing" and is no longer in the menu bar, could you open Console and see whether there are any crash logs? If so, please email those and your Diagnostics to our info@ address so that I can take a deeper look. You can get your Diagnostics file by typing "?diagnostics" into Alfred.

If there are no crash logs, check the Activity Monitor app and see if Alfred is still in the list of running apps.

@AKPRODUCTIONS  There are a few reasons Alfred may not be finding files on your external drive.

First, macOS needs to be indexing the external drive as Alfred uses the same underlying index to find files; According to the troubleshooting you've shared, indexing is enabled on your external drive, but macOS currently isn't indexing the files in question, so that'll be the first step. (To clarify: This troubleshooting report from Alfred presents the metadata of what macOS is doing, as Alfred uses the macOS metadata index and doesn't index anything directly.)

Once files on the external drive are showing as indexed, you have a few options:

1. Create a File Filter workflow to specifically find files on the external drive. This is the recommended option, as it's more efficient and gives more control over the scope and content of the results.

2. Add your external volume to your search scope in Alfred's Features > Default Results preferences. 

Here's a more detailed explanation of how different types of external volumes work with macOS indexing that will give you additional insight:

Cheers,
Vero

Alfred 5.5 Release Candidate is now out with build 2257; We're now one step closer to the general release.

We've tidied up a few more things in preparation for the release, and you've all been doing a great job helping us test it out! Full details are in the change log in the Update tab, as usual.

Cheers,
Vero

10 hours ago, andy4222 said:

@Stephen_C thanks for creating this. Any way we can trigger each preference directly (without triggering the initial keyword). 

@andy4222 Stephen's workflow tidies them all behind a single keyword. There's an alternative workflow here with individual keywords for each preferences pane.

@GrimlocK Taking a look at your Sync settings, I can see that you're using ~/Documents/Alfred Settings/ as the location for your preferences, which will be synced via iCloud.

First, quit Alfred and copy the Alfred.alfredpreferences file from your sync location to:
~/Library/Application Support/Alfred/

In the Application Support folder, delete the prefs.json file and relaunch Alfred.

In the Advanced Preferences, Alfred should now say that your preferences are not synced. Try using your preferences in this location, and see if you get normal behaviour in terms of updating workflows, removing duplicates, etc.

This takes iCloud out of the equation, and we can then set that back up next.

15 hours ago, macrospect said:

Alfred often is just "missing": when I hit my hotkey to open Alfred

@macrospect Could you please elaborate on that? Is the Alfred bowler hat still present in the menu bar? Can you show Alfred's search by choosing "Toggle Alfred" from that menu bar icon?

I'd like to understand if it's a scenario where 1. Alfred quits or becomes unresponsive or 2. Alfred is still there and working but your preferences have been moved or removed so Alfred may not be responding to the hotkeys you expect.

If it's the latter, try temporarily creating a new folder directly into your user directory (i.e. /Users/yourusername/Alfred/ - not inside Documents or Desktop, as these can also be synced by iCloud) and set your preferences to be "synced" to this location. This will unsync your preferences on that Mac, and will give a stable location for your preferences. Try setting your computer to sleep and waking, etc to see if the behaviour returns to normal. This will help narrow down the issue to a syncing one.

Cheers,
Vero