fonginator

6 hours ago, Andrew said:

The default setting is "Standard Mode" with no reason to change from this anymore, which I guess is why we are only seeing this in a tiny proportion of users. @fonginator I assume you were in Compatibility Mode and switching back to Standard fixed it for you? (you may have played with this setting long in the past and forgotten).

This setting is so buried I don't know why I would've played with it… but I registered for the Powerpack way back in 2010 so I can't vouch for every setting I've played with in the intervening years. 😅

6 hours ago, Andrew said:

Using the CPS console clue, I tried double clicking the Alfred 4.app icon, and this is enough to get things working normally again (this is a user action in the eyes of macOS, and Alfred will show the window when you double click). From this, I see that simply opening Alfred with "open /Applications/Alfred\ 4.app" in Terminal is enough to get the macOS Window Server to believe there was a user action.

I suppose this explains why activating Alfred with Spotlight "re-activated" Alfred's hotkey combination when I experienced this issue. In any event, I wonder how many other people may be having this problem but have not bothered reporting it. Maybe there should be some sort of one-time warning or some obvious mention if someone has Compatibility Mode enabled?

17 hours ago, Finerdly said:

I see what you mean, this would be very strange - but I actually tested it on a clean MacOS user and it was easily reproducible by just switching to Alfred Appearance Compatibility Mode, focusing a password field on some website in Safari and then using the global Alfred Hotkey to make it break in the same way I had it break all the time on my normal MacOS user.

 

So I think @fonginator's post was just unintentionally a little bit misleading. Maybe @fonginator can clear this up for us

Yes! I actually re-tested this after the resolution and was able to reproduce this on demand after toggling said setting… and not after some period of use.

Yes! @deanishe's suggestion fixes the problem for me. I never changed the Focusing mode setting (been running Alfred since its early days).

FWIW, I also see these log messages immediately after the activation problem:

error    12:43:11.956984-0500    WindowServer    CPS: Denying Alfred the right to be in front because secureTextInput is active and this process doesn't have secure text mode enabled, and this request was not caused by user activity
…
default    12:43:11.960613-0500    Alfred    Item (<private>) was removed because there is not enough space. minWidth=389.000000

Running Alfred 4.6.2 [1276]

I tested with a new user account and did not immediately reproduce this problem; however, this seems to occur some time after my Mac has been running so I cannot say conclusively whether this is an issue related to other apps or whether something happens over time that would also affect my new user (test) account.

7 hours ago, Vero said:

 

Could you let us know which version of Alfred you're using? Always best to update to the latest pre-release (4.6.2 at this time)

 

Take a look at the Console logs from earlier in this thread and see whether any of these happen on your Mac, and report these back to us so that we can see what macOS has to say.

 

Also, please let us know in as much detail as possible when it happens (what app is in the foreground), what browser plugins you're using, etc. 

@Vero I've already posted my steps to reproduce with Microsoft Teams, but here are two easy ways to "disable" Alfred's activation hotkey:

1- Launch Terminal.app, enable Secure Keyboard Entry. This alone is enough to disable Alfred's hotkey.

2- Launch Terminal.app, disable Secure Keyboard Entry. Type sudo -s, hit Return. Alfred's hotkey is now disabled as if Secure Keyboard Entry was enabled (it is not).

In both cases, Alfred has not crashed. I can restore Alfred's hotkey by bringing up Spotlight (Command-Space) to launch/activate Alfred. Once that's done, Alfred's hotkey works again.

I'm using macOS 12.1, Alfred 4.6.2 [1276]. There have been a number of reports like these in this thread with many scenarios to reproduce the problem, and I wonder whether this is even being looked into or if anyone in the dev team has been able to reproduce this. I don't think I've seen this listed as a known issue or something that's being looked into.

2 hours ago, deanishe said:

No reason shortcuts should be affected: AFAIK, setting a shortcut is telling the OS "call me if this shortcut is pressed". The app doesn't need to watch your keystrokes itself.

 

Snippets are a different matter: Alfred needs to be able to monitor your keypresses to recognise snippet keywords.

How is listening for the activation keystroke different from listening for a keyboard shortcut I’ve set for a specific workflow? Alfred has to monitor keystrokes either way.

@Vero I've found a way to reproduce the loss of Alfred's hotkey almost 99% of the time; there are random times when this does not trigger the problem. And yes, I do get the following console message when this occurs:

CPS: Denying Alfred the right to be in front because secureTextInput is active and this process doesn't have secure text mode enabled, and this request was not caused by user activity

In my case, I have MariaDB installed via Homebrew so the easiest way for me to trigger this problem is by getting mysql to prompt me for a password:
 

❯ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:

Now if I attempt to trigger Alfred with my hotkey (Control-Space), nothing happens even after I dismiss the password prompt with Control-C or by entering a password. I have to re-launch Alfred in order to get the hotkey working. However, interestingly, keyboard shortcuts for my various workflows still work, even at the password prompt that disabled my Alfred hotkey.

I am running iTerm2 3.4.12 (Secure Keyboard Entry is disabled) on macOS 12.0.1 with Alfred 4.6.1 [1274].

I've noted that the same behaviour sometimes occurs with some other password prompts, too, like the one that the Microsoft Teams app displays when it wants you to login.

@VeroI experienced the loss of hotkey problem yesterday. It was 100% reproducible but only when Microsoft Teams presents its login prompt. I am pretty sure this has to do with Secure Keyboard Entry or something similar because when I was prompted for my password by the app, my Alfred hotkey (Control-Space) stopped working until I used Spotlight (Command-Space) to bring focus to Alfred, quit Alfred then re-launched it via Spotlight. However, every time the password prompt came up, Alfred's hotkey stopped working.

OTOH, Alfred did not crash. It simply stopped responding to the hotkey shortcut.

And FWIW, I had to disable Secure Keyboard Entry in iTerm2 or else Alfred's hotkey stopped working altogether.

2 minutes ago, Vero said:

@godbout @fonginator Sounds like there's a hotkey conflict. Please check your Spotlight hotkey, which was likely reset to cmd + space by macOS on upgrade to Monterey. This would result in the exact behaviour you're seeing.

 

Also, as you're likely both using multiple languages, check that it's not being used by the language switching or the Siri "hold Cmd Space to speak" feature.

 

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/cmd-space/

 

Cheers,
Vero

Hi Vero,

My hotkey is Control-Space and has been like that since I installed Alfred many moons ago so I don't believe this applies to me. Rather, I believe this issue is related to the main problem I've been having since upgrading to Monterey which is that Alfred's hotkey will eventually stop working. I originally had to disable Secure Keyboard Input in iTerm2 to even get Alfred to trigger but even with that setting turned off, Alfred still eventually stops responding to my global hotkey.

3 minutes ago, godbout said:

i'm having somehow a similar issue since i've updated to Monterey. my global shortcut for Alfred stops working and Alfred doesn't toggle. toggling from the menu bar though doesn't help either. quitting sometimes does sometimes not. if nothing works then i reset the global shortcut in the settings and i'm good for a couple of hours.

This has been happening to me with increasing frequency over the past few days. When it does, I use Spotlight to activate Alfred, quit then re-launch it and everything is back to normal again for a while.