Andrew

@schmu from your troubleshooting output, my response above is relevant to you. There is unfortunately an indexing issue in macOS at the top level on your Mac which needs to be resolved before considering issues with Dropbox.

As an aside, can I also confirm that you have granted Alfred full disk access?

The errors and warnings seen in the diagnostics are coming from macOS (and being reported by Alfred). The reindexing shortcut in Alfred fixes this issue in all but the rarest of cases. If, after trying both the reindexing and deleting the .Spotlight-V100 Folder options in Alfred, you're still seeing issues, then there is a deeper rooted issue on your Mac.

If you open Terminal and paste the following command:

mdutil -s /

This will give you the current indexing status of macOS. If nothing has improved since you ran the troubleshooting, you'll likely see the same:

/:
	Error: unknown indexing state.

It's surprising that Spotlight is still functioning with this state (as this command and output directly relates to Spotlight's own index)

For fixing this, if you search Google for "macOS Error: unknown indexing state", you'll find quite a few different ways people have fixed this (including here on this forum).

For completeness, if you use the Rebuild macOS Metadata Index option within Alfred, the following commands are run:

mdutil -i off /; sleep 5; mdutil -E -i on /

Let me know how you get on, or if you need any further guidance.

@Miltrin you are adding the line break in your script. Use echo -n to output without a linebreak.

You could alternatively add a Transform utility workflow object after your Run Script, set to "Trim Whitespace"

This is a clear case that your Mac's Metadata index is broken. (Spotlight and Alfred both cache, so one or the other partially working isn't an indication of validity).

First, make sure there is nothing in Spotlight's privacy:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/indexing/#privacy

Then deeply rebuild your macOS metadata index from Alfred's "Rebuild macOS Metadata" button in his Advanced preferences.

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/indexing/#rebuild

On the sheet which pops up, press the "Delete .Spotlight-V100 Folder" button. You'll be asked for your password, then reboot. It'll take a while after rebooting while your Mac reindexes (can be up to an hour).

If you're still having issues after an hour, re-run the diagnostics for anything which could not be previously found.

Cheers,

Andrew

@Yone This sounds like you could have Alfred 4 or below installed (which expects a 4 line code).

Replace this with Alfred 5 directly from our website: https://www.alfredapp.com/ and try again  

Cheers,

Andrew

As Stephen discovered, Firefox is now marking copied data from a Private session as concealed. Alfred ignores this by default.

I would recommend against unchecking this option in Alfred, as it's best practice to not have concealed data in Alfred's clipboard. The best approach would be to contact Firefox and ask for an option to not conceal the data from a Private session.

Here is a relevant post:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1425837

Cheers,

Andrew

@Floating.Point The original reported issue should now be fixed in 5.1.3 b2175, could you let me know?

@ndirons Looking at your workflow, it's working as expected.

Any variables set in one connection stream do not affect other connection stream. Setting the variable in the top Run Script will not be seen by the delay object and subsequent connected items. This is by intrinsic design to allow for predictable logic building throughout different connections, while also allowing for shared usage of objects within a single workflow.

Rephrased in the context of your workflow, you could have many outputs from your keyword, all connected to a middle Run Script which sets a different variable, then all connected to a final Run Script which acts on the current context based on what was set upstream:

Cheers,

Andrew

@gingerbeardman Alfred's updater already works in the way described on that updating_mac_software link.

I'll add an internal ticket to investigate this a little deeper, but this is the first time we've seen this specific crash, so it could also be down to simple corruption during the update.

@gingerbeardman I see you're running macOS 12.7 - Could you open Console.app and email the crash log (from the Crash Reports section on the left) to our info@ address.

Alfred 5.1.3 was built with Xcode 15, but we tested on Monterey before releasing. The crash log should give me a point to what's going on with your Mac.

After this, you can revert to 5.1.2 with this link:

https://cachefly.alfredapp.com/Alfred_5.1.2_2145.dmg

Thanks,

Andrew

I believe this has something to do with you unchecking "Displays have separate Spaces", as I think this makes your display act as one giant "active display" to the underlying API.

Could you re-enable this option and let me know?

@alexdor This is working as expected on my Ventura 13.6 M1 Pro 14" with 2 external displays. Could you give a little more information about your hardware config / displays?

Also, can I check what options you have configured in macOS Prefs > Desktop & Dock > Mission Control? (screenshot)

@albertkinng It looks like you're using Alfred 4 which is too new for macOS Yosemite (Alfred 4's minimum required OS is 10.11 El Capitan).

You'll need to use Alfred 3 which you can find here:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/v3/

Cheers,

Andrew

@kinwolf can i confirm, can you open Alfred's preferences? That's what the original post is about... not accessing the macOS System Preferences.

For accessing System Preferences, try one of these two workflows:

https://alfred.app/workflows/alfredapp/system-settings/

https://alfred.app/workflows/stephenc/open-macos-settings-panes/

@luckman212 when trigging a script filter directly, that script filter is unique to Alfred (i.e. the only thing running / showing). You'll also notice this if you wire a Keyword into a Script Filter, you'll see the same Script Filter icon on the right.

When in the default results, depending on context, Alfred could be showing results from multiple sources / workflows.

Cheers,

Andrew

You can view which version of Alfred you're using from the hat in the menu bar:

Alternatively, open the Applications folder on your Mac, select Alfred, right click and "Get Info" from the popup menu. A macOS Window will open which includes a version number.

Cheers,

Andrew

@brookter these aren't the correct things to uncheck, re-check all Default Actions in Universal Actions. Vero was referring to this configuration:

Absolutely, if quitting Karabiner fixes the issue, then you have a Karabiner configuration where pressing enter may also issuing a Tab in the events. You currently have Tab configured in Alfred to show the actions, which is why your Karabiner config is causing the issue.

Take a look at your Karabiner settings and see if you have any configuration which relates to the enter key in any way possible (I've seen this before, but I can't find the post). We have many users who happily use Alfred and Karabiner together.

If you switch Showing Actions to the arrow or fn key, this should also fix the issue, but you'd be better off working out how Karabiner is altering the enter key.

1 minute ago, brookter said:

I just want to be able to use the open application feature

Pressing enter on Safari.app shouldn't bring up the Universal Actions or Recent Documents, it should just open Safari.

If this is not happening, there is a misconfiguration somewhere on your Mac. If you could send your diagnostics, that'll help us work out what this could be.

@JiabaoGao Alfred doesn't show system files by default as this adds a significant amount of noise to the default results.

It is however possible if you have a Powerpack with a simple Workflow. If you could fill in your Powerpack address in the forum profile (Only visible internally), then I'll share a simple workflow to achieve what you're looking for

Cheers,

Andrew

@mcfog could you send the crash report from Console.app to our info@ email address please.

Also, try resetting Alfred's permissions using the following in Terminal:

tccutil reset All com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred

If resetting the permissions works, you'll need to re-grant all relevant permissions (button "Request Permissions" button in Alfred's General prefs should help with this).

6 hours ago, spongeblink said:

Are language-related issues discouraged in this forum?

They are not, but non-whitespace word matching within Alfred's framework adds certain complexity which I have yet to have a chance to analyse.

I'm leaving this as an open bug in the forum until I've had time to process.

What's happening here is by naming a folder with an extension, you're essentially assigning it a type in the underlying index. When the underling index doesn't have an association for that type, it assigns it a dyn.* type (which is a hash of the extension) as a placeholder until an app claims this extension.

An example of this is if you rename a folder Something.alfredpreferences, this folder will get an Alfred icon and all of a sudden become a "com.runningwithcrayons.alfred.preferences" package, even though it's still a folder.

Alfred leans towards the "correct" identification of the file rather than automatically treating it as a folder (which macOS can use as various other things).

If you're looking at configuring a File Filter to find all folders, I wouldn't recommend adding dyn.* to the file types as this could make your file filter also include many other unassociated indexed files which aren't folders.

The underlying content type tree in the metadata for all of these types includes "public.directory", so if you configure your file filter to be +public.directory, then this will match against the tree and find all folders.

@Floating.Point most of Alfred's internal icons only adhere loosely to this rule, allowing for limbs and decorations to extend to the full edge. I think the only reason your icon looks big compared to the rest is because it has a full white (rounded) background.

@Floating.Point the "Encode URL" icon seems unusually large in your screenshot (making the issue worse), where is this icon from?

I'm going to move this to bugs, there really should be a minimum margin here regardless of theme.