nikivi

It's pretty straightforward, actually. The only time Alfred might pass your script multiple arguments (via ARGV) is from a File Filter or a Hotkey with Argument = "Selection in macOS". At all other times, arg and variables are always single strings. If you try to use any other datatype, Alfred will convert it to a string, e.g. if you set arg in your JSON to an array, Alfred will convert it to a tab-delimited string before it reaches the next action.

If you want to pass around anything that isn't a string, you can either first convert it to a string (e.g. using JSON) and then back again in the next action, or save it to a file.

It's called Pacmax. Saw it posted on Reddit.
 
I was actually thinking of building it but glad that I don't have to. 😅

It would save you a handful of seconds per month, Niki…
 

 

This solution was posted to one of my Go workflows:
https://github.com/deanishe/alfred-sublime-text/issues/20#issuecomment-539578934
 
It's not very straightforward, though.

Also, if anyone's considering building a "Reveal in Finder" workflow, I'd very strongly recommend using a model similar to my AppScripts or Safari Assistant workflows.

Provide a built-in and a user script directory, and put application-specific scripts in there. When the workflow's run, it should grab the name/bundle ID of the active application, look for a corresponding script in the script directories and run it if found.

The potential for requests to add support for apps is basically limitless, so you really want to make it easy for users to add support for apps themselves, and to answer any feature requests to support app XYZ with "Sure. Write the necessary script, submit a PR, and I'll add it to the next release."
 
Otherwise, you're going to be dealing with endless support requests, many of which will be impossible to implement.

Automating Alfred Preferences
 
I have always hated how in Alfred Preferences there were really no hotkey support for making things and you had to use your mouse for creating workflow objects or do any kind of interaction to make the workflows.
 
I have however managed to fix this by using Keyboard Maestro app to make macros to both create workflow objects from the keyboard alone as well as do common operations like opening debugger, changing workflow version number, making notes and a lot more.
 
I put all the different actions for creating workflow objects in a palette.
 
To better demonstrate everything, I made a YouTube video that you can watch below:  
 
 
 
Download
 
Here is the repository where you can download these alfred palette and the macros for using in Alfred:
 
https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac-os/tree/master/km 
 
I hope you find it useful. Feel free to comment and I would love to hear your thoughts on it or perhaps on ways that you guys have automated using the Alfred Preferences editor itself. ? 
 
 
 
 
 

Niki is as Niki does…

? keyword lets you effectively search Alfred. However it does strict search so you are forced to start search query with how the actual workflow name starts. No fuzzy searching is supported.
 
It would be awesome if ability to fuzzy search through results was added.
 
Thank you.

This is definitely an issue, imo. I've got a bunch of workflows called "XYZ Bookmarks" (Firefox Bookmarks, Pinboard Bookmarks etc.), and Alfred considers none of them to be matches for the query "bookmarks".
 
The preferences search stands out in particular, but I think this is generally an issue with Alfred's filtering outside of its default results. There, it does a fantastic job of learning and adapting to my own usage patterns. In most other places, I have to adapt my usage to suit Alfred instead because its matching is so strict.
 
You can't search both track and artist fields in the iTunes Mini Player, which is a very natural way to search for something like a song (the iTunes library is such a perfect fit for a SQLite database with FTS, too). I can't select my "Rename for Web" File Action with "rw" (or "rfw" or "renweb" or anything that isn't the start of "rename" or "for" or "web"). I can filter to "Application Support" with "as" when I navigate to ~/Library, but that also matches a bunch of other folders, and a more precise query like "appsup" (which is what I would naturally use) doesn't work.
 
I don't expect (or want) full-on fuzzy search everywhere, but it's a perfect fit for File Filters, and Navigation Mode would benefit greatly from being more flexible, too, imo. I want Alfred to learn from and adapt to me, like it does with its default results. Currently, Alfred's strict filtering means it's the other way around.

? keyword lets you effectively search Alfred. However it does strict search so you are forced to start search query with how the actual workflow name starts. No fuzzy searching is supported.
 
It would be awesome if ability to fuzzy search through results was added.
 
Thank you.

This is not necessarily a workflow I am sharing but something I use that I love and would really love to share with you. It allows me to use and manipulate all the great workflows you kind people have created and share and use them seamlessly. It also allows me to spike up my usage stats by some pretty wild numbers : 
 

 
The reason is that I don't ever really activate anything using hotkeys any more. I use something called 'sticky keys' and I have achieved using Karabiner. [Here](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/dotfiles/tree/master/karabiner) is my repository with my config file for Karabiner. I have also put a readme in there to show how I use it and what for. You can just clone the repository and use the settings and change them to what you consider best for you.
 
I hope you will like it too. Tell me what you think of it and if you managed to get it to work. You can ask any question you have about the config file I have as it is pretty lengthy.
 

Just tested it out @Andrew, works incredibly well. Thanks.

@nikivi funny you should ask - I had actually made the required changes to the framework during Alfred 4's development but didn't actually get around to implementing this in the contacts viewer. I'll add this in for the next release
 
Cheers,
Andrew

@nikivi if you update to Alfred's latest 4.0.2 pre-release b1086, you should get the behaviour you're after. Could you let me know?

Amazing. Works wonderfully. 

Not all Node-based workflows want to be installed via npm. A lot of them are built like regular workflows, but they need /usr/local/bin/node.
 
I think the comparison is a good one because the latter kind of workflows get a lot of support requests for getting Node & npm working. If someone downloads your .alfredworkflow file and it doesn't work, they expect you to help them get it to work (even though it's Homebrew/Node they need help with).
 
 
Alfred-Workflow 2, I suppose. A complete rewrite that supports Alfred 4 and Python 3 only. That'll enable me to rip out a lot of the Alfred 2-era cruft and improve the API.

I wasn't very clear. I meant in Alfred itself. It only has File Actions. There's no equivalent action panel for any other type (text, URL, email address, etc.) and the buffer doesn't work with anything but files. Similarly, your workflow can only return items with no type (implicitly text, I suppose) or with type "file" (in which case you can use File Actions on workflow items or add them to the buffer).
 
macOS Services support a lot more types than just files, so I think it would be sensible to expand Alfred's supported types at the same time. Not only would you get much more complete support for Services, but it would also make workflows much more powerful if they could put their own stuff in the buffer and add their own URL Actions or Text Actions.
 

This is a rather bad argument, as they're both using the same mechanisms under the hood. It's a question of quality of implementation. Certainly, I don't see why you would need AppleScript for that.
 
 
Yes, it is. This is largely a result of the fact that Alfred's "native" format is lists and LB's is trees—a much better fit for navigating a filesystem. A such, you're always going to be able to implement better filesystem navigation in LB than in Alfred.
 
That said, it'd be nice if Alfred were more inclined to copying good ideas from other launchers.
 
Hopefully, Alfred 4 will go like Alfred 3, and Andrew will add a bunch of significant new features with dot releases.

Yeah. Every other app that makes heavy use of plugins also has a mechanism for updating them. People often have dozens or scores of workflows. You can't manage that by hand. It's tedious to implement the user interface around library update mechanisms in every workflow, and OneUpdater doesn't have the smoothest UX.
 
There's a new Export Metadata… feature that exports a JSON file containing description etc. and a downloadurl.
 
Hopefully, this is the start of a move towards a real, built-in updater. It should certainly help with building indexers for workflow discovery.

In Alfred 4 there is `Only Show Enabled` setting but no `Only Show Disabled` which to me is very useful too as I want to instantly see all the disabled workflows I have in my library. I have over 100 workflows and disable ones I am not using now but still want to keep.
 

 
Would appreciate this option being added.

In case you haven't seen our tweet from a few days ago...
 
Prepare your keyboards and stretch those finger muscles, Alfred 4 is coming in June!  
 
We've posted a very high-level list of just some of the features and improvements you can look forward to here:
https://www.alfredapp.com/v4/
 
You'll answer find answers to questions about upgrades, and an email signup if you'd like to hear about Alfred 4 as soon as it's available!
 
 
 

It's not a valid workflow. See the GitHub thread for details.

The thing with Python is the startup time. If you’re using my library, for example, it takes ~0.05s to load Python and import the libraries.
 
0.05s is definitely perceptible.
 
As far as optimising Python workflows goes, I focus on caching and lazy imports.
 
They're always going to be noticeably slower than compiled workflows, though.
 
I mostly use Go these days. It’s somewhat more effort to write than Python, but 20x faster.

I have something in the works which I think will make you very happy with regards to this. That's all I'm saying for now
 

Welcome @FrenchMajesty (funny nickname),
 
You can already do what you want, by starting your operations with = (in your example, = 20 % 5. It activates Alfred’s Advanced Calculator, which also allows sin, cos, tan, log, log2, ln, exp, abs, sqrt, asin, acos, atan, sinh, cosh, tanh, asinh, acosh, atanh, ceil, floor, round, trunc, rint, near, dtor, rtod.