Vero

Here's a Custom Web Search. Paste this URL into Alfred:
 
alfred://customsearch/Search%20Lane%E2%80%99s%20Lexicon%20for%20%E2%80%9C%7Bquery%7D%E2%80%9D/la/utf8/nospace/http%3A%2F%2Farabiclexicon.hawramani.com%2Fsearch%2F%7Bquery%7D%3Fcat%3D50  
 
alfred://customsearch/Search%20Arabic%20Lexicon%20for%20%E2%80%9C%7Bquery%7D%E2%80%9D/al/utf8/nospace/http%3A%2F%2Farabiclexicon.hawramani.com%2F%3Fs%3D%7Bquery%7D  
 
Not with a mouse, no. You could create a Hotkey that searches for the currently-selected text, though. Create a workflow with a Hotkey with Argument = Selection in macOS, then connect that to an Open URL Action. For the URL, open one of the Custom Web Searches above, and copy its Search URL into the Open URL action.

So you’ve just updated to the new buggy shininess released by Apple. Congrats! But thread lightly. At all costs, you should avoid installing a beta macOS version on a machine with data you can’t afford to lose or waste a day resetting.

In the course of your beta trial, you’ll bump into bugs and general issues. Some will be related to Alfred and Workflows, which will make you tempted to jump on this forum for help.

Stop! Then wait. Ask yourself “is this a bug I should be reporting?” The closer to WWDC21, the likelier the answer is “no”. The overwhelming majority of bugs at this point will sort themselves out. And they are inconsistent. At the time of writing there have been two comments from users on the new macOS beta: one said Alfred worked, the other that it didn’t. At this point the new beta is so unstable we can’t even rely on a consistent experience between users, meaning no way to isolate and understand problems—effort spent in that direction wold be wasted.

Avoid drowning the forum with unactionable bug reports.

In general, if you don’t have enough knowledge or skill to figure out the cause of the problem, you should refrain from installing a beta OS. Please avoid filling but reports if that’s the case. Or file them at Apple, since it’s their end causing the breaks and giving them feedback is the point of installing their beta OS.

So when should you start reporting general Alfred bugs? Look at the bug reports subforum. Do you see a “macOS 12.0 Monterey Bugs & Issues” section? If not, it’s too soon.

What about Workflows? You should follow the same logic. If a Workflow stops working, either the developer will know because they are using the beta, or they won’t know and won’t be able to fix it anyway because they are not on the beta.

There are exceptions to the above, but few. If you do make a bug report, please make sure to follow the instructions. Do that, and everyone will be more willing to look into your issue sooner and help get you sorted.

Thank you. Have fun with the new features.

Scriptability matters for Alfred Workflows, so this is a short thread on what we know about scriptability on the new macOS version. Discussion and new data is welcome; I’ll strive to keep this top post up to date with the most relevant information.
 
Python, Perl, and Ruby survived in the same versions as Big Sur, but PHP was removed.

Shortcuts is coming to macOS, but it doesn’t mean the end of AppleScript yet:
 
 
The Shortcuts app will scriptable, though the functionality isn’t yet available. It will also have a command-line tool:
 
 
On June 8 there was a session going more in-depth into Shortcuts. Notable points:
 
“We also added two new automation types for Focus and Sound Recognition”.

“By the way, if your app integrates with file providers, these new Files actions will automatically work with the files that your app provides”.

“We also have a new file format that lets you distribute Shortcuts as files“. (…) “This means that you can distribute your own Shortcuts on your website or in your app”. Which means we may be able to distribute Shortcuts as complements to Workflows. For M1 Macs, that may open a window to distribute everything needed to control iOS apps from Alfred.

However, it’s unclear if we’ll need a ($99/year) Developer Account to distribute them in useful form, since they mention signing: “Shortcuts files are notarized by Apple to make sure they’re safe”. (…) “a new mode for sharing Shortcuts privately” (…) “Shortcuts files are signed with the identity of the person who sent them. If you need to re-sign a Shortcut, you can use the new Shortcuts command-line tool”.

“Shortcuts has full support for AppleScripts and Shell Scripting”. Not dead yet!

“Shortcuts is the future of Mac automation”. Taken in isolation; it’s a scary implication the other technologies are destined for the bin. But in context, they’re talking speficially about replacing Automator.

“There’s a Shortcuts command-line tool which lets you list and run Shortcuts in your Shell Scripts or command-line tools”.

“If you develop an app or a script that would benefit from the ability to run Shortcuts, you should use the Scripting interface. By communicating with the “Shortcuts Events” process, your app can get a list of shortcuts that the user has set up, as well as start running one. In AppleScript, you can accomplish this by telling the “Shortcuts Events” process to run a shortcut by name”:
 
tell application "Shortcuts Events" run the shortcut named "Make GIF" end tell  
“Finally, macOS Monterey also includes a command-line tool that can list shortcuts and run them by name. If you have command-line tools or scripts, they can integrate with Shortcuts via this interface”.
 
OVERVIEW: Command-line utility for running shortcuts. USAGE: shortcuts <command> OPTIONS: -h, --help Show help information. SUBCOMMANDS: run Run a shortcut. list List your shortcuts. view View a shortcut in Shortcuts. sign Sign a shortcut file. See 'shortcuts help <subcommand>' for detailed help.  

@Chris Messina Thanks for the reminder! Been meaning to update this a bajillion times, but when I come to the forum, I just crack on with answering questions and forget every time. I've just updated it to be light grey instead so should be easier to read

Nvm. Found your github repo (https://github.com/deanishe/alfred-workflow/blob/master/workflow/background.py). I'll go thru this and figure out myself. 
Didn't expect I was getting help from special forces!

@M4L @deanishe After some investigating a few days ago, Andrew was able to work out what's happening.
 
 It seems to be specifically related to the column view in Finder. If you change the default Finder view to items or list, then it works as expected.
 
The workaround is to change the Finder view, or to use "Open File" instead of "Reveal in Finder", as this will open the folder in Finder, but also select it.
 
This is clearly a bug in Catalina, and we tried various workarounds to this issue using Apple's APIs to no avail. You get the same behaviour if you cmd+return in Spotlight on a folder. This is a bug that didn't exist on the older Mojave version of macOS, but unfortunately is exhibited in Big Sur's latest beta.
 
Cheers,
Vero

You'll need to set keywords for the Snippet Triggers as these are stripped from the workflow to avoid clashing with your own.
 
For example, I've set them to these... Just keep in mind the shared prefix in your Snippet Triggers setup, so I've only set them to "tw" and so on, and the \\ prefix is set globally for all my snippet triggers.
 

 
You've no doubt figured that in @dfay's example, you can set the name and address in the environment variables under the [x] in the top right of the workflow canvas   
 
You can read more about the snippet triggers object, or see the few scenarios with dynamic content within the snippets as examples too. 
 
Nested snippets and snippets trigger based workflows generally are really good fun and ever so useful.

You'll need to set keywords for the Snippet Triggers as these are stripped from the workflow to avoid clashing with your own.
 
For example, I've set them to these... Just keep in mind the shared prefix in your Snippet Triggers setup, so I've only set them to "tw" and so on, and the \\ prefix is set globally for all my snippet triggers.
 

 
You've no doubt figured that in @dfay's example, you can set the name and address in the environment variables under the [x] in the top right of the workflow canvas   
 
You can read more about the snippet triggers object, or see the few scenarios with dynamic content within the snippets as examples too. 
 
Nested snippets and snippets trigger based workflows generally are really good fun and ever so useful.

@iNyar When searching for files elsewhere on your Mac, are you seeing everything you need in Alfred?
 
I would suggest, to help work out whether the files in Dropbox can be found, creating a File Filter workflow to search your "Papers" folder specifically:
https://www.alfredapp.com/help/workflows/inputs/file-filter/
 
Set the search scope to that folder (and optionally, which file type(s) you want to see returned in the search) then use this and see what's returned.
 
Let me know how you get on
 
Cheers,
Vero

Yes, that's fairly simple to do with Alfred. Just a Run Script action with Language = /bin/zsh:
 
# fetch contents of URL and save them to variable "count" count="$( curl -fsSL http://domain.com/path/to/page )" # output to next action echo -n "I currently have $count subscribers"  
Connect that to a Copy to Clipboard output with "Automatically paste to front most app" selected.
 
You can trigger it via a Keyword, Hotkey or Snippet Trigger.

Could you please open the Accessibility preferences, remove Alfred using the minus symbol, then re-add Alfred to the Accessibility list? Based on what you're describing, it seems that macOS has forgotten the permissions, so re-setting them should resolve that.
 
Let me know how you get on
 
Cheers,
Vero

@chuckbutler ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ is the path where your iCloud documents are stored.
 
You can remove it from Alfred's search scope, but keep this in mind in the future if you decide you want to search iCloud again and results aren't showing in Alfred. You can then reset the search scope with the "Reset" button, which will bring back all default paths.
 
Cheers,
Vero

Right-click in Alfred’s query box, then untick Text Replacement in the Substitutions submenu.

Absolutely. Alfred doesn’t upload any data to its creators or anyone else.
 
 
In theory, it's potentially risky. In practice, it's just not an issue. Alfred is too small to be an attractive target. But If someone did create a malicious workflow, there are enough paranoid users (like me) running all manner of security software that it would be quickly spotted.
 
If you must worry about something, worry about bugs, not enemy action.

Welcome @bebek. To both the Alfred forums and macOS!
 
 
For many (most?) of us, Alfred is the first app we install on any Mac and we almost feel useless using macOS without it. It can get that ingrained in your usage.
 
 
Like every closed-source software, you have to trust its creators. I wholeheartedly trust Alfred’s team (@Andrew and @Vero) and I recommend you stick around to meet them in the forums. You’ll see they care deeply for Alfred’s users and they have everything to gain from being truthful. Plus, they’re nice people in general.
 
 
That’s indeed something different, and your reluctance in understandable and healthy. You definitely should install Workflows—like any other software—from people you trust. That said:
In these forums, you’ll find plenty of prolific developers with dozens of released Workflows. Get to know us and decide if you should trust us. I think you should! I’ve never heard of an invasion of privacy or security from an Alfred Workflow. In fact, most (all?) don’t even so much as have analytics! The overwhelming majority of Workflows are built in scripting languages, meaning anyone can inspect the code. Hiding something malicious isn’t too viable, especially in popular Workflows.  
 
The latter, as I don’t see myself giving up Alfred any time soon. But no software satisfies everyone’s needs and we don’t know each other, so I can only tell you what I’d recommend myself.

It was very easy for me because I already knew all of the necessary stuff (basic text parsing, structure of an Alfred snippet/snippet collection, creating a ZIP file in Python).
 
I copied this list into my code editor (I use Sublime Text, but whatever), made sure each misspelling only had one correction (i.e. deleted all but one alternative), and pasted the text into a Jupyter Python notebook.
 
Then I wrote the code to (a) parse the text into (misspelling, correction) pairs, (b) convert each pair into the appropriate structure for an Alfred snippet, (c) convert those structures to JSON, and (d) put them all in a ZIP file. (Alfred workflows and snippet collections – and a whole host of other file formats – are just ZIP files with different extensions.)
 
It's only about 40 lines of code, all in all.

you can import this list into a "list filter" object (which accepts a CSV input), set your client number as the argument, then link to a "Copy to Clipboard" output. or you can use @deanishe's I-sheet-you-not workflow 

@ADG Welcome to the forum
 
You can indeed delete individual items from the Clipboard Viewer using Fn + backspace. 
 
Cheers,
Vero

@miq Double characters is suitable in some cases but it isn't a foolproof solution; Choosing that option requires some thought and sometimes - as with your example - some exceptions. You might want to add some out-of-order capitals, for example. 
 
Here's some insight into sequential snippets, using an example I use many times a day. We've created a huge snippet library of helpful support answers, links, code snippets, etc which we use to provide responses. I can then tailor the response, but it gives me a good starting foundation without typing til my fingers fall off.
 
For example, my response to someone who's emailed to recover their license:
 
Hi Andrew, "plS4" which expands to "No problem, please find below your Alfred 4 Powerpack license code:" [I paste their license code, which is already in my clipboard] "yen4" which expands to the explanation of where to download Alfred 4 "cV" which expands to  "Cheers, Vero"  
Aside from "Hi Andrew,", I can write the entire email in 10 typed characters, plus pasting the license code: plS4⌘vyen4cV    
 
Each snippet takes care of including the necessary trailing new lines to ensure I'm at the right place for the next sequential snippet I'm pasting.  While my snippets are short, they won't be accidentally triggered as they don't use a normal combination of letters I'm likely to type in everyday phrases.
 
Andrew describes your scenario as a corner case as it's the first time this issue has been raised, throughout the years since we released this feature. We are always listening to the community, and read every thread and email. If many users were encountering this issue, we would certainly consider providing solutions. However, for the time being, this would just complicate the text expansion settings further.
 
Cheers,
Vero

Apologies for the slow reply, I seem to have missed this notification!
 
Here's one of the popular workflows for searching the Notes app:
https://github.com/sballin/alfred-search-notes-app/releases/tag/3.3.0
 
Cheers,
Vero

@peegeebee If by workflow, you're referring to the default web search for Google Translate, the URL structure was changed by Google a couple of days ago.
 
If you update to the Alfred 4.3.2 pre-release (by going to the Update tab, choosing "pre-releases" from the dropdown menu at the bottom and updating), you'll see that this URL has already been updated to reflect Google's change
 
Cheers,
Vero

Just wanted to pop in and say... This is exactly why we love our Alfred community from all over the world. Not only are you helping each other out, but you're nudging each other to remember to be kind and friendly. This thread made me smile this morning  
 
Cheers,
Vero

As per my previous message, we'll get the ball rolling this coming week

Target email is info@ the obvious Alfred domain.
 
[Edited by Vero, please don't put our whole email address to be picked up by spam bots. ] 
 
I sent you the email.

I sent you the email.