Steve Ball

This is actually a bug in the Spotlight window not correctly releasing the keyboard input focus when a floating panel is shown over it. Alfred is a floating panel instead of a traditional window, and this confuses Spotlight.
 
One workaround is to set Alfred's Appearance > Options > Focusing to compatibility mode, which makes the Alfred window act more like a traditional window, and this doesn't seem to "break" Spotlight.
 
Having said that, I'd recommend leaving Alfred in the floating panel mode as this is the least intrusive overlay for other apps and their focus behaviour. Just disable the Spotlight hotkey in the System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts, or set it to a very obscure key if you're coming across this issue.

Hi Rodrigo,
Your very handy workflow doesn't work anymore in Big Sur. Do you have a new one?
Kind regards,
Rutger

FIX: On the Apple discussion thread, a number of users have reported that disabling Siri solved the problem of the first activation of Spotlight being ignored (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8148782?start=30&tstart=0)

UPDATE: I spoke to soon, my problem is back. It's much infrequent now but I still occasionally get the problem. Bugger. Looks like I'll be switching to alt-space and will retrain my fingers.
 
 
I've found a solution to this problem. Others have encountered the same issue with High Sierra (in their cases with Spotlight not activating):
 
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8148782
 
The suggested solution was to reboot in Safe Mode (hold down Shift while rebooting) and then reboot as normal. It also seems to be advised to run EtreCheck and fix any problems it identifies.
 
It solved my problem. Spotlight reliably starts on first press of cmd-space and I've since disabled that and assigned Alfred the key. All seems good now.
 
Thanks, @iandol, @deanishe, @Andrew

FIX: On the Apple discussion thread, a number of users have reported that disabling Siri solved the problem of the first activation of Spotlight being ignored (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8148782?start=30&tstart=0)

UPDATE: I spoke to soon, my problem is back. It's much infrequent now but I still occasionally get the problem. Bugger. Looks like I'll be switching to alt-space and will retrain my fingers.
 
 
I've found a solution to this problem. Others have encountered the same issue with High Sierra (in their cases with Spotlight not activating):
 
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8148782
 
The suggested solution was to reboot in Safe Mode (hold down Shift while rebooting) and then reboot as normal. It also seems to be advised to run EtreCheck and fix any problems it identifies.
 
It solved my problem. Spotlight reliably starts on first press of cmd-space and I've since disabled that and assigned Alfred the key. All seems good now.
 
Thanks, @iandol, @deanishe, @Andrew

Thanks, @deanishe, that's good to know. I'm going to change my behaviour. Going forward I will ignore the yearly OS upgrade until it's been out there at least 6-12 months. I never imagined I'd get to the point of distrusting Apple's QA to the point of not being willing to accept its free OS updates. But I guess that's life, eh, and especially in technology, everything has its zenith and then goes into decline. As often as not (in our industry) it's a single individual who is able to assemble teams of high-performers and focus their creative potential in a single direction. Without that person and vision most teams/products/companies go into reasonably rapid decline. I've seen it happen many times. The person at the top really does deserve a lot of credit for the team they assemble and what that team achieves. It's sad to see that Apple's light has faded when they once personified excellence and attention to the smallest detail.

Apple provides security updates for the previous 2 versions of macOS, so any holes in El Cap or Sierra still get patched.
 
 
Yeah. I used to be almost unreservedly happy with Apple products. Now they're just less bad than the alternatives.
 
 

Isn't it? It's got so bad, I generally don't start to think about upgrading to a new major version of macOS until the one after that is about to be released.
 
It's particularly annoying with High Sierra, as they've finally replaced HFS+, which should have been removed a decade ago. But it clearly needs another 6 months in beta.