Vero

We absolutely love and appreciate the enthusiasm you're all showing for the new features, and the possible further extension to it. 
 
If there's one thing you could do to help us make this process even better is to share your feedback in a structured and succinct way, e.g. a focused sentence or two on the feature suggestion, and a short paragraph explaining your use case.
 
Andrew and I do our best to acknowledge feedback here, by email and on Twitter, all while continuing development, providing support and doing all the boring business stuff that has to happen behind the scenes. As such, long stream of consciousness posts can be difficult to parse into actionable feature suggestions.
 
Again, thank you for your input, we love this community  
 
Cheers,
Vero

We absolutely love and appreciate the enthusiasm you're all showing for the new features, and the possible further extension to it. 
 
If there's one thing you could do to help us make this process even better is to share your feedback in a structured and succinct way, e.g. a focused sentence or two on the feature suggestion, and a short paragraph explaining your use case.
 
Andrew and I do our best to acknowledge feedback here, by email and on Twitter, all while continuing development, providing support and doing all the boring business stuff that has to happen behind the scenes. As such, long stream of consciousness posts can be difficult to parse into actionable feature suggestions.
 
Again, thank you for your input, we love this community  
 
Cheers,
Vero

Happy Monday all!
 
After some intense development, Alfred 4.5 is here with a huge new feature called Universal Actions.
 

 
Take a look at the beta page here for all the details, and a download link:
https://www.alfredapp.com/universal-actions/
 
We've included a built-in workflow (under [+] > Getting Started > Universal Actions) to get you started, and we can't wait to see what custom actions you create
 
Cheers,
Vero & Andrew
 
 

Yes, there'll be a full changelog when this goes to pre-release, and documentation will be updated by the time it goes to general availability  As for testing, just use it as much as you can, trying out the built-in actions, creating your own ones, and let us know how you get on! 
 
 
It replaces it in the Features preferences, so the hotkey you previously used to perform actions on your File Selection can now be used on text and URLs as well   You'll just see relevant actions for that particular item type (e.g. a file can be revealed in Finder, a bit of text can be opened in Dictionary, a URL can be opened in a browser, etc)
 
Just try selecting text or URLs and take a look at the actions available.

Happy Monday all!
 
After some intense development, Alfred 4.5 is here with a huge new feature called Universal Actions.
 

 
Take a look at the beta page here for all the details, and a download link:
https://www.alfredapp.com/universal-actions/
 
We've included a built-in workflow (under [+] > Getting Started > Universal Actions) to get you started, and we can't wait to see what custom actions you create
 
Cheers,
Vero & Andrew
 
 

@Andrew I see what you mean! Very many thanks: brilliant!
 
Stephen

Thanks - runs great on Big Sur.  I added Universal Action triggers to my case converter workflow and it was trivially easy to do (though my muscle memory is such that I'll probably stick with hotkeys for that one ).
 
Now available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3k2lh21g5wnqrkp/Case Converter 2.alfredworkflow?dl=0

Happy Monday all!
 
After some intense development, Alfred 4.5 is here with a huge new feature called Universal Actions.
 

 
Take a look at the beta page here for all the details, and a download link:
https://www.alfredapp.com/universal-actions/
 
We've included a built-in workflow (under [+] > Getting Started > Universal Actions) to get you started, and we can't wait to see what custom actions you create
 
Cheers,
Vero & Andrew
 
 

@Orange Welcome to the forum
 
Alfred only instructs macOS to open a URL in your default app (which happens to be Safari). You'll need to set this in Safari, which is under the "Tabs" preferences.
 
 
 
Cheers,
Vero

awesome! 😍
I repurposed a workflow to remove extra spaces when pasting from a PDF etc... works very nicely. 
thanks for making Alfred better and better. 
 
 

Happy Monday all!
 
After some intense development, Alfred 4.5 is here with a huge new feature called Universal Actions.
 

 
Take a look at the beta page here for all the details, and a download link:
https://www.alfredapp.com/universal-actions/
 
We've included a built-in workflow (under [+] > Getting Started > Universal Actions) to get you started, and we can't wait to see what custom actions you create
 
Cheers,
Vero & Andrew
 
 

Happy Monday all!
 
After some intense development, Alfred 4.5 is here with a huge new feature called Universal Actions.
 

 
Take a look at the beta page here for all the details, and a download link:
https://www.alfredapp.com/universal-actions/
 
We've included a built-in workflow (under [+] > Getting Started > Universal Actions) to get you started, and we can't wait to see what custom actions you create
 
Cheers,
Vero & Andrew
 
 

Happy Monday all!
 
After some intense development, Alfred 4.5 is here with a huge new feature called Universal Actions.
 

 
Take a look at the beta page here for all the details, and a download link:
https://www.alfredapp.com/universal-actions/
 
We've included a built-in workflow (under [+] > Getting Started > Universal Actions) to get you started, and we can't wait to see what custom actions you create
 
Cheers,
Vero & Andrew
 
 

@AndroidKitKat If you can locate your VM apps, you can drag them into the Spotlight Privacy folder. Once you've done that, type "reload" into Alfred to refresh the app cache, and your VM apps will no longer show up in your results.
 
Cheers,
Vero

@Nicolas Mertens This seems to be an isolated issue experienced by only a couple of users, likely caused by interference by a third-party.
 
As the user above you stated, You can resolve this by changing Alfred's focus to Compatibility Mode in the Preferences > Appearance > Options > Focusing: Switch from Standard Mode to Compatibility Mode. Have you done this?
 
Cheers,
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.