jy-gh

@NickSloan figured this out. There's a workflow--which looks pretty neat but is apparently unsupported now--called Recent Documents that does this. It was adding those results, so it wasn't conflicting so much as co-existing unexpectedly. 😄 -jy-gh

@NickSloan asked me about a quirk in the Recent Files workflow where some extraneous results were being displayed. He shared a screenshot, which was very helpful, but also baffling, as I don't see how it could be related to the workflow. In his results, the subtitle line of some of the results from Alfred display a diamond icon, then what looks like a timestamp, then a heart icon. I have attached a picture. This may be something everybody but me knows about--I'm always learning about new things that Alfred can do--and I would love to be enlightened if that's the case. Thanks! -jy-gh

Well, I'm not sure I completely agree with "a simple File Picker add multiple paths via GUI wouldn’t really work interface-wise when paths are in wildly different directories", but maybe there's more to unpack in either what's considered "simple" or in the implementation details of this specific File Picker. (The macOS Finder, for example, can easily do multi-select, but again that could be an unfair comparison of Apples to oranges.) As far as using some sort of field separator--wow! I knew that one could type in a file/directory name, but I hadn't realized the full implications of that. Very interesting, and thank you. I was able to implement this in my workflow, and I'll be updating it in the near future. I chose to use a colon-separated list instead of a comma-separated list both to stay with the convention used in the $PATH environment variable--and also because it seemed more likely that there would be filenames with commas than there would be with colons. Thank you again for explaining this!

Right now the File Picker widget used in User Configuration only supports selecting a single item. It would be a nice enhancement to allow multiple selections. In the meantime, how have workflow creators worked around that? My first thought was to use a text area, and then use a colon-separated list, similar to $PATH. My script could then parse it and separate the list into usable parts. That's not as user-friendly as it could be, and since my workflow already has a file picker I'd have to decide how to handle the situation where a user chooses something from the file picker and also enters something in the text area (does one take precedence? do I combine the inputs?, etc.) There's also the issue of a user accidentally putting in something that's just wrong and it being non-obvious to troubleshoot. Example Here's an example use case in case I wasn't clear: My workflow, Recent Files, is a search utility workflow. Users choose a top-level directory to use as a starting point for file/directory searches. Instead of choosing a single directory, such as $HOME, I'd like to give them the option of a selecting multiple directories to search (~/Documents, ~/Desktop, etc.). I could put in a text area that takes input such as: $HOME/Documents:$HOME/Desktop:$HOME/src:$HOME/SomeOtherDirectory This is easily parse-able, but subject to the problems I listed above. A Different Idea, maybe better I guess I could also allow the user to select a file instead of a directory, with the logic that if the file picker is a file, read the contents of the file to determine what directories to search (and use the ordinary behavior if the user selects a directory instead). That's probably a much better short-term solution, and it will be sufficient to support users who are comfortable creating text files. It might slow the workflow down a bit, and of course someone might try to use a Word document or some other format instead of a plain text file, but on the whole this is probably an acceptable solution. Anyone have a better idea?

Argh, forgot to make a release. It's there now.

Vitor, Thank you for your suggestion. I have implemented it, and it's on GitHub now. As for the screenshots, how are these? JY

Vitor, Sorry, I completely messed that up. Here are two hopefully correct screenshots, created with Shift-Command-4. Thank you for your patience. JY

Vitor, Thank you! That was a great suggestion, and it definitely improved the workflow. I have updated GitHub with a new workflow and changed the README to reflect the changes. Here's a different screenshot, as requested: Thanks!

I'm the author of a new workflow called Recent Files. Recent Files finds the most recent files (from a configurable location) and sends them to Alfred. There is no forum thread for this workflow, but there is a GitHub page: https://github.com/jy-gh/RecentFiles Dependencies: Recent Files uses the fd utility (available from MacPorts, Brew, and as a direct download) and Python 3. Here's a screenshot (an animated .gif file is in the README.md file on GitHub): This workflow has become a daily part of my Alfred use. I don't have to think about where a file I just downloaded is, I can return quickly to what I was working on yesterday or the day before, and I don't have to type the filename to find it. Because it uses the fd command instead of the Unix/Linux find command, or the macOS mdfind command, it's very speedy. Users of the workflow can customize where to search, how far back in time to search, whether to include files and directories in the results, and what files/directories to skip when searching.