Stephen_C

5 minutes ago, liketheduck said:

they have no incentive to innovate

Ah, you clearly have not seen news of the Alfred 5.5 beta.

Stephen

@macrospect I've had a little more time to look at this and I think you'll find Pearcen's workflow will do exactly what you want because it does exactly what I mentioned in my previous post and is much more elegant than my earlier programming solution.

Stephen

See also today's pertinent article by Howard Oakley.

Stephen

Not with my workflow as currently written, sorry.

Stephen

@macrospect I've not had a chance to look at @Pearcen's workflow but if by any chance it doesn't do what you want I should be able easily to recreate and post a link to my workflow. However it should also (as Pearcen implies) be possible simply to replace a space with a hyphen without using code and making use of Alfred's Replace utility. You could easily create a Universal Action (limited to text) to work that magic on appropriate selected text.

Stephen

This is purely a guess as I do not use iCloud Drive, but are either of you using Optimise Mac Storage? If so I think Alfred will be unable to find the relevant files whatever you do. In other words, in order for Alfred to find them you'd probably have to disable Optimise Mac Storage and add iCloud Drive to your Alfred search scope (or, much better, create a specific File Filter to search for files on iCloud Drive).

However, as I say, I do not use iCloud Drive so can't guarantee that what I have suggested would work: sorry! The best way to approach the issue, I think, is to create a specific file filter designed to search iCloud Drive and see if you can make that work. That way you won't either or mess up your default Alfred search scope or clutter your normal searches with unwanted results.

Stephen

5 hours ago, ThanhD said:

my idea is to use a Hotkey to trigger a custom Universal Action via the Alfred Action

I've looked at your workflow but I still don't understand why you want to try to do that. The idea of a Universal Actions is that it works—using your Universal Action hotkey—on a selected item (i.e., text, a fle or a URL). All you need to do is to have a number of Universal Actions within your workflow—each limited to either file, text or URL and labelled appropriately. That means you'll end up with something like that following Universal Actions within the workflow:

• Send text…
• Send a URL…
• Send a file…
• Share text…
• Share a URL…
• Share a file…

Then all you would have to do would be to select something, use your Universal Action hotkey and start typing either "send…” or "share…” to see your relevant Universal Action. Alfred will then take care, for you, to select the relevant action (i.e., on text, a URL or a file).

To emphasise the point, you need a Universal Action for each type of object (file, URL or text) and for each action (send or share). At the moment you have Universal Actions which apply to both text and a URL (although possibly in your case it won't make a difference to the recipient if you send a URL as simply text).

Stephen

Version 2.0 is on the Alfred Gallery now.

Stephen

2 hours ago, ThanhD said:

Not to mention, if I pass in a string like 'A B C', the Automation task (Is_File?) returns an error like this (even when I've processed to join strings and remove spaces):

[14:42:12.368] Sharing[Arg and Vars] Passing output 'A B C' to Automation Task
[14:42:12.370] ERROR: Sharing[Automation Task] Task Argument Error: Expecting single or multiple inputs. Warnings: (
    "Passed in file 'A B C' does not exist, discarding"

That is because you passed in a string to that Automation Task and it correctly rejects it because it is not a file. If you test the output of the Automation Task in a Conditional true/false test you can filter the input accordingly. In other words what I originally suggested will work: you just have to test the output from the Automation Task in a Conditional in your workflow.

Frankly, the easiest way to distinguish between files, strings and URLs is to use Universal Actions and set up a different action for each type.

Stephen

I'd be inclined to try this:

• pass the input to the "Is File?” Automation Task and if the resuilt is true deal with the file;
• if the result is false pass the input to a Conditional and use regex to check whether the string starts with "http”.

That deals with files and URLs and otherwise (I think!) leaves you with a string. Do you think that might work for you?

Stephen

It looks to me as though you have copied the filename from Finder. Try opening the image and copying the image itself and you should see the preview.

Stephen

1 hour ago, macrospect said:

I am on Alfred 5 on both work and home computers, the latest version.

To be quite clear, the latest version is Alfred 5.5. beta 2. Do you mean that or Alfred 5.1.4 which was the prior release version?

(It's always better to be specific about version numbers rather than simply refer to "the latest version” because, in cases like this it's important and can lead to confusion.)

Stephen

1 hour ago, macrospect said:

I sync Alfred preferences using iCloud. 

Have you made sure your preferences are made available offline?

Stephen

Do please tell us:

• exactly what versions of Alfred and macOS you are running;
• how you sync your Alfred preferences;
• what changed on your system(s) just before the problem occurred (e.g., a macOS update).

13 minutes ago, macrospect said:

anyway I don't fully turn my computers off often

Well you might try rebooting both to see if that makes a difference. My view is that regular reboots are desirable.

Stephen

Just a quick note that I've updated my Open macOS settings panes workflow to add access to some anchors in the Accessibility, Privacy & Security and Sharing panes. The workflow is on the Alfred Gallery and will doubtless be updated there to version 2.0 in due course.

Stephen

Welcome to the forum.

If you're absolutely sure there is no cmd + space conflict (a common cause of the symptom you describe) it may be worth checking that Alfred has all the necessary permissions.

Stephen

See this post and the suggestion a couple of posts after it.

Stephen

What versions of macOS and Alfred are you using? In Alfred Preferences → Default Results have you checked Folders under Extras in the right hand pane? If not, try that and give the index a while to update then see if that improves matters for you.

Stephen

Welcome to the forum.

What happens when you type only Downloads (without the word Find)?

Stephen

This (GitHub download link) is a simple workflow I created to search the Alfred forum and return the result in a Firefox private window.

If you use Firefox as your default browser fallback search URLs will not open by default in a Firefox private window. For those, like me, who use Firefox private windows extensively that is frustrating. However, you can easily create a Alfred workflow to overcome that problem and this workflow shows one way to do it.

In this case I chose not to use the Fallback Search trigger as (because of the scope of the possible search terms) it was simpler to use a keyword and then the search term. (For example, if searching for Dropbox on the forum you may well not get a fallback if you use Dropbox because you'll have the app and a folder on your Mac which will probably appear in your search results.) However, if you wish you could easily use this method to create a fallback search the result of whcih appears in a Firefox private window.

The workflow has no dependencies (apart from the need to be using Firefox as your default browser, of course).

Stephen

As that does not happen when I use that Universal Action (with Alfred 5.5 beta 2 and macOS 14.3.1) please confirm what versions of Alfred and macOS you are using.

Stephen

As the symptoms you describe are symptoms of a Dropbox folder of Alfred preferences not being made available offline did you specifically ensure as Vero mentioned:

On 3/3/2024 at 9:41 AM, Vero said:

Ensure the folder containing your Alfred preferences is set to always be available offline, which you can set by right-clicking the folder in Finder

You have not confirmed that is the case on the problem machine so, in view of the symptoms, I thought it worth stressing.

Stephen

Please confirm your macOS and Alfred version numbers.

When you choose "Update from Alfred Gallery” what exactly happens? Do you see anything happen on screen or any error message?

Where do you store your Alfred preferences? Are they stored in the default location or in some location you have set in order to sync them?

Edit: Are you using a VPN?

Stephen

Assuming you are talking about workflows from the Alfred Gallery just do this:

• Go to Alfred Preferences → Workflows.
• At the bottom of the second column click on Alfred Gallery and then Check for Workflow Updates.
• You can sort the list of workflows by Gallery updates to show the updates at the top (click on the button to the right of Filter at the top of the list) and then right click on each workflow needing an update and choose Update from Alfred Gallery.

Do note that if you make changes to a workflow from the Gallery the workflow will think it needs to be updated. If you need to make changes and avoid the workflow being overwrtitten you need to change the workflow's bundle identifier.

If that doesn't solve the issue for you please post with more detail about exactly what happens when you try to update a workflow (e.g., does it in fact update but the icon remain, or does it fail to update at all?) and confirm your Alfred and macOS version numbers.

Stephen

It would be worth going through all of the suggestions on this Alfred help page: Why isn't my Clipboard history working?. If, when you have done that, you still have problems please post again and confirm your macOS and Alfred versions.

Stephen