Andrew

@sepulchra Vitor has raised an internal ticket for this, so I'll take a look at what could be happening when I get a moment.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a design reason this wouldn't work, so it may just be a bug.

@Brandon Faloona could you please type ?diagnostics into Alfred and email the exported file to our main info@ address, I'd like to see if Alfred has actually been able to download the tasks himself.

This should hopefully allow me to provide a solution, otherwise I'll reply with instructions to install the tasks manually.

Cheers,

Andrew

@saor47 To clarify my previous reply, you're instructing Alfred that you're passing a file path back as the argument, but telling him to skip the validation.

Quote

If you would like Alfred to skip this check because you are certain the files you are returning exist, use "type": "file:skipcheck".

If you're forcibly passing back a URL instead of a file as the argument, the behaviour becomes undefined / unsupported.

Cheers,

Andrew

[moving to Workflow Questions]

@nb1 If you set Alfred's focus mode to "Compatibility Mode", then Alfred's window will act more like a traditional window in macOS and take the focus when you show him.

This setting is in Prefs > Appearance > Options (bottom left) > Focusing

Note that for every other use, the default focusing mode makes Alfred work better and more predictably, so use this setting mindfully.

Cheers,

Andrew

@saor47 The "file:skipcheck" is simply to tell Alfred not to check if a file exists before presenting to the user. This doesn't alter the argument passed out.

Also, the File Buffer is for files only, not URLs, so it's  not clear what you're trying to achieve.

Could you please provide a small example workflow, and a bit more of a description, that'd be helpful!

Cheers,

Andrew

@Michael Leddy the biggest clue is the "On my way!" example, which operates at a lower level than the clipboard, and suggests this issue is outside of Alfred.

What I suspect is happening is another app on your Mac (which may have accessibility access) is momentarily fettling the clipboard, and Alfred is just doing what is asked of him by storing this in the clipboard.

Try the following couple of things:

1. Quit every other app, including background apps (aText etc), menu bar apps on your Mac, and see if the "On My way!" issue still happens.

2. Create a second account on your Mac, switch to that user, and see if the "On My Way!" example happens.

Cheers,

Andrew

It's also worth noting that in your screenshot, fileproviderd and fseventsd are also super high CPU usage.

Are your preferences stored locally or on e.g. iCloud / Google Drive? If not, move them local and see if this is the cause.

@mikedvzo As this issue is unique to you, I'll need as much info as possible to try and ascertain what you have on both Macs which could be causing this issue.

The first place to start is with a Sample Process in Activity Monitor while the Preferences is at 100%. This could help point towards the root of the issue.

If you could reply to Vero's email with that, and with a Diagnostics from Alfred Preference's help tab.

@zeitlings I've put in some range and divisor warnings for the next build, and upped the artificial 25 maximum markers limit.

As a side note, after spending some time fiddling with this, setting the snapped marker count incorrectly is an easy (non-obvious) trap to fall into, so the additional warnings are very useful. Thanks for highlighting this issue.

This is actually a pretty interesting quirk, and it looks like Alfred's doing everything he can correctly. In the first example, Alfred is correctly saving the visible integer value, and when re-opening is setting that same value back on to the macOS slider, but the macOS slider component is truncating and snapping it to the lower value (closer marker).

I already mention in the subtext for the Only Stop on Markers: "Test your configuration carefully to match your desired value range", which is essentially warning about what you've found.

I could update this to show a warning that the markers don't divide cleanly into the number range, I'll add an internal ticket to have a think about it.

@caleb531 I've added an internal ticket to look into this, thanks!

@drnut Take another read of @zeitlings reply, as this tells you everything you need if you want to use the Script Filter.

If you don't want to return additional results into Alfred and just want to run a script with an argument, perhaps what you're looking for is:

Keyword -> Run Script -> Large Type

@MINT Alfred's default knowledge and latching is based on the currently typed phrase in Alfred's input field to the selected result. As such "F" could match "Firefox", but "Fi" could match "Find My".

Take a careful read through this page which explains exactly how Alfred sorts, and when happens when Alfred doesn't have relevant knowledge:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/kb/understanding-result-ordering/

Cheers,

Andrew

@zlebandit could you email the exported output of typing ?diagnostics into Alfred to our info@ address so I can take a quick peek at Alfred's settings?

Cheers,

Andrew

@zlebandit do you have the following option selected:

Features > Contacts > Advanced > Use Spotlight metadata to searching contacts

This can sometimes result in duplicate contacts if you have a copy (backup) of the contacts somewhere random on your Mac.

Alfred relies on the underlying macOS APIs for file search, so any comparisons to older versions of Alfred/macOS are in fact misdirected as the macOS file search system was much more simple back then (primarily local based).

Having said that, Alfred 5 should always perform practically instantly and very accurately on the an up to date Mac / macOS. We perform a significant amount of profiling and diagnostics to ensure that Alfred is always lightweight and performant.

When users are seeing laggy performance on file searches, the advice is always the same, and directed at fixing the underlying issues which may exist in the macOS metadata. This usually results in a macOS rebuild index (in certain cases with deleting the .Spotlight-V100 folder for a deep reindex).

Subsequently, we recommend using Alfred's default search scope, then use Workflow file filters for external drives. This avoids quirks such as waiting for external drives to wake up. We also recommend keeping Alfred's default result types to a minimum, (e.g. Apps / Prefs), then using the file search modes ([spacebar prefix], open, find) to search for files.

Note: Alfred's knowledge is used for result sorting, not file search. Before considering issues with sorting, it's best to get to the bottom of why the macOS file search isn't working. Did you migrate your very old Mac to your M2, as the macOS migration assistant has been known to cause file search issues. If so, did you delete the .Spotlight-V100 folder when rebuilding the macOS index?

Cheers,

Andrew

@alfredpanda change the hotkey trigger mode to "Simulate modifier keys released" or "Wait until modifier keys are released", otherwise when Alfred simulates the ⌘C, you'll still be holding the option key. You can do this by clicking the teal symbols to the right of the hotkey config field.

Note that Alfred's default option is Simulate, so this should work by default.

@VDH You should only have Alfred 5 installed, you may also have Alfred 1 installed from the Mac App Store. If installed correctly, you should only see "Alfred 5" in your Applications folder.

Unresponsive behaviour can be caused by having Alfred's preferences folder set to e.g. iCloud and using Optimised Storage, where the files Alfred needs instant access to no longer exist on your local drive.

Can you open Alfred's Preferences to the Help tab, and email the output of the "Diagnostics..." button to our info@ email address and I'll take a look.

Cheers,

Andrew

@pseudometa Excellent spot! I'll get this fixed in the next build.

Thanks,

Andrew

The text view uses a native macOS Scroller for the text view, so you won't get the themed scroller like in Alfred's default results. You're seeing it like this because you likely have your macOS setting to "Show Scroll Bars: Always". If you set this to the default of "When Scrolling", you won't get the background drawn behind the scroller.

Having said that, there are a few things you can do to make this look a little better if you want to keep the macOS "Always" setting enabled.

1. Assuming macOS is in dark mode, Switch Alfred's dark mode rendering to native in the Appearance > Options > Use Native Dark Mode window rendering... This should make the background darker and fit with your theme better.

2. Update the theme to use a Visual Effects View background. You'll lose the pink border, but this uses a more modern window content view, and the scrollers are rendered differently.

Let me know how you get on

Cheers,

Andrew

@gingerbeardman Is this a one off, or reproducible?

As this (so far) seems unique to you, the first thing I'd check is other apps you have in the macOS Privacy & Security > Accessibility prefs. There may likely be another app which is fettling the macOS Event stream and preventing Alfred from getting the snippet keystrokes. This would tally with you quitting and restarting which put's Alfred (temporarily?) ahead of the app which is removing those events.

(Aside: It's worth also noting that Alfred doesn't fettle the event stream, only reads from it to match snippet keywords.)

@Oneechan69 once you've added the Applications (Parallels) folder to Spotlight Privacy, type "reload" in Alfred to clear his cache. This should do the trick

@Egypt Urnash There are no ChatGPT features by default. Our users privacy remains our highest priority, as it always has been.

The ChatGPT workflow is totally optional and self-contained, i.e. you need to install it from our gallery. If you haven't installed this, then Alfred doesn't even have knowledge of this service.

Alfred does not collect or send your data anywhere, unless you specifically and intentionally install a workflow to communicate with a service of your choosing, such as ChatGPT / OpenAI.

Hope that helps clear things up!

Cheers,

Andrew

@andy4222 The way I'd approach this is pass the single argument in the URL as comma or pipe separated, then add a Split Arg object after which can split this into either variables or multiple arguments depending on how you want to use it within the workflow.

@mrzumo Welcome to the forum and thanks for upgrading to the Powerpack today!  

I like the idea of having ChatGPT as a fallback, I think if we ask Vitor nicely enough, he'll probably add it

Cheers,

Andrew