Michael Leddy

I thought I found the solution: in the aText Advanced settings, there’s an option to always use the clipboard (i.e., the Mac clipboard) to insert snippets. I unchecked it, and everything was briefly as it should be. But then the problem came back. Then I tried unchecking two more aText Advanced options: Automatically use Clipboard when inserting long text, and Automatically restore Clipboard. That seems to have solved the problem — an aText problem.

Andrew, thanks for your response. The problem seems to be with aText itself: when I quit the app, the Mac keyboard replacement text doesn't go to the Alfred clipboard. Maybe the problem is with aText and the way the new Mac chips handle memory and clipboard stuff. (I'm way above my head here.) I'm going to let the developer know there's a problem. Thanks for a wonderful app — my Mac wouldn't be my Mac without it.

I just uninstalled (AppDelete) and reinstalled — the problem persists. But I just realized it’s a bigger problem — it also affects keyboard shortcuts independent of aText. So if I type o,m,w, the built-in Mac shortcut for On my way!, then On my way! shows up in the Clipboard history. This problem makes the Clipboard kinda unusable — I hope there’s a way to solve it.

I just checked — all settings are the same. (I used Migration Assistant to bring everything over to the new Mac.) I tried clearing the Clipboard history too, but the problem comes right back. (And a URL that I copied earlier that should have disappeared comes back too.) I’m going to try uninstalling and reinstalling Alfred — maybe something went wrong in the migration.

I think I might have the problem figured out: I fired up my older Intel MacBook Air — same aText and Alfred as a newer M3 MBA — and the clipboard is fine. So perhaps this problem has something to do with Apple innards.

Thanks, Stephen. It certainly sounds like that’s what’s happening. Nothing in aText has changed (no recent update), but I’ll see if the developer can offer any insight.

Here’s a problem that I've noticed with Alfred 5.5: I use the app aText (an inexpensive alternative to TextExpander) to manage all sorts of words, phrases, and bits of HTML. When I type an abbreviation, the bit of text or code that results now appears in the Clipboard. For instance, if I type MM LL to get my first and last names, the names get added to the Clipboard. I’ve tried adding aText to the list of apps for Alfred to ignore, but that does nothing. I haven’t seen this problem before 5.5. Any suggestions? Michael Leddy

Thanks again, Stephen. I’m really lost though trying to figure it out. For now I’ll stick with the ones I have -- pretty quick to do from the keyboard. I just thought it would be nifty if a workflow could get the highlighted text without Command-C.

Stephen, thanks for your suggestion. Could you explain where that would go? Vitor, thanks for your suggestions. I’ll look at the Automation Task to create Markdown links. I’m in way over my head here, but that’s often a good way to learn. I should mention that the Safari extension URL Linker doesn’t work properly in Ventura. A working extension would make all of this a lot simpler.

I asked ChatGPT to write Alfred workflows to create an HTML link with selected text or title from the current tab in Safari. It took about six tries for AI to get them right. Granted, it’s easy to create links in Markdown or with aText or TextExpander doing the tedious stuff, but I wanted to see if a workflow could do it in HTML (especially useful, I’d say, for those of us who still blog and are making links on the fly). I used a Hotkey, so there’s nothing to show in the Alfred window. URL+text: It’s necessary to highlight text, press Command-C, and then press the Hotkey. If anyone knows how to have a workflow recognize highlighted text without the need for Command-C, I’d love to know. #!/bin/bash text=$(pbpaste) url=$(osascript -e 'tell application "Safari" to return URL of front document') link="<a href=\"$url\">$text</a>" echo $link | pbcopy URL+title: All that’s needed is to press the Hotkey. #!/bin/bash title=$(osascript -e 'tell application "Safari" to return name of front document') url=$(osascript -e 'tell application "Safari" to return URL of front document') link="<a href=\"$url\">$title</a>" echo $link | pbcopy I’ve placed the workflows in a Dropbox folder for downloading: URL+text: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1v1w4qfn28rt9ye/URL%2Btext.alfredworkflow?dl=0 URL+title: https://www.dropbox.com/s/thd9o8kogr6cvbl/URL%2Btitle.alfredworkflow?dl=0 I’m no coder, and I hope what I’m sharing here is appropriate and useful.

Simple, but I haven't seen it, so I'll share it. A custom search for Google Books: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q={query} Better living through automation