Chris Messina

Yes — actually, if I typed a space and then some characters, the workflow would have filtered the results. You are correct. Sometimes I forgot the specific text that I'm looking for so don't know which characters to type, and that's when I would use a scrollbar so that I can visually browse the results, but indeed, this is very much an edge case.

I agree it's not a bug and should have been filed as a feature suggestion. While you can make the width wider for the theme (which would affect the aesthetics), my issue is more about functionality. Even with an enormous amount of results — I assumed that it was intended as a functional scrollbar to move vertically through results, rather than merely a "non-interactive theme-able scroll indicator". Perhaps my expectations were too high! Anyway, not a priority — just seemed something that could be improved for workflows with lots of results...

Thanks for thinking through some solutions! It's funny, I actually do set different widths (sometimes very narrow widths!) in my themes in order to achieve different appearances. What seems most "Mac-like" would be for Alfred to implement a near-hover behavior that grows the size of the scroller as the cursor approaches. This is what macOS does, after all:

The scrollbar becomes VERY TINY when there are LOTS of results. Seems like there should be a minimum height/width?

It stills seems to work for me... (although it's added some ugly ads)... can you share what's going wrong?

💯

Yes! This is exactly what I was suggesting — it's both more accurate and doesn't obtrusively get in the way of the default/majority case: Thanks for hearing me out and considering this discussion and moving quickly on an implemented solution, @Andrew! And thank you @Mr Pennyworth for summarizing the different perspectives and moving the core conversation forward which, in my view, resulted in a better Alfred for everyone. 😅

Generally I believe that none of you want to drive me off, and so I'm just not sure if there's a lack of awareness about tone/emphasis or if I just feel like my suggestions are met with more friction here than I receive elsewhere. In service of uncovering the best ideas and most inclusive implementations of those ideas, I welcome and solicit good faith criticism, debate, and skepticism (preferably curiosity). I'm just left feeling that several topics that I've kicked off as rather banal/trivial/straightforward suggestions to improve Alfred are met with a wall criticism about why my interpretation or experience with the problem, which I'm offering a solution to solve, is at base, flawed. From my view, a superior outcome to this current conversation, for example, would be to say, "ah yes Chris, that's an interesting observation you've made. Yes, I can see why you'd want to be able to select a native non-browser app that can handle URL schemes in this interface, but for the sake of historical consistency — and given that the behavior you're pursuing is actually already how this works at the OS level — while your proposal would make this interface more accurate, the net-net of it is that's probably not worth prioritizing for now." In this formulation, my good intention is acknowledged, expressed to me in a way that I feel understood and heard, feel like due consideration is given to what I've proposed, and given a satisfying response that while this idea is reasonable, it's unlikely to be prioritized. I can live with that. I can move on and not feel belittled. And I'll have confidence to come back and share other ideas — any of which that might actually be worthy to pursue imminently. Do you see the difference between the response I received and what I would have been satisfied by?

I do have positive intentions and am well-meaning, but have a different perspective than what seems to be the dominant perspective on this board. My priorities or sensitivities aren't the same as everyone else's here, and so I give voice to them because I think Alfred (and similar software) can be a net-good for helping people use technology more effectively, and in a personalized way. But by holding minority viewpoints, I find that many of my well-meaning suggestions are more quickly shot down rather than being met with curiosity, credulity, or interest. Rather than amplifying the merits of my contributions, it feels like I am often criticized (if not directly, somewhat obliquely) as being ignorant of some deeper held awareness that only the longest serving mods on this board have. Like, I'm trying to imagine saying to you, in response to an idea that you just shared, that "you seem to me to be stuck in a bubble of theoretical design and repeatedly missing the necessary practical decisions of software". I'm willing to believe that you intended this constructively, but instead it sounds like a clergyman chiding a choir boy, especially in the context of the many other rebuttals I've received — the definition of patronizing. Had I made that statement towards you, would you have received it differently? Now, it's perfectly possible that I have bad ideas, or that my ideas are irrelevant to the denizens of this board. But as I believe I have stated previously, one of my desires is to expand the use of Alfred by other people — people who are likely not well represented on this forum — because I believe Alfred is a fantastic piece of software, which can also be made better. But I've also had enough experience in my years in the open source world and elsewhere to recognize when my contributions are likely misplaced and it's I should find or create a more receptive environment for my advocacy. For example, I remember back in 2005 I advocated that Drupal use a new technology called "AJAX" to make its interface more responsive and thus easier to use. But the core maintainers rejected my proposals. Years later, and after Drupal finally realized it needed to modernize in order to keep up, the maintainer who had most strenuously fought against my position acknowledged that he had been myopic and unwilling to listen to me and that, ultimately, he had been wrong. I had long since moved on, but it's possible that had the Drupal community been more open to divergent input (not specifically from me, but from less dogmatic/ideological users), it may have lead to a faster adoption of Drupal, and thus a greater impact on the world. And so there's no confusion: I'm not comparing your comments with that Drupal maintainer's. I'm not suggesting that this slight suggestion about "browsers" is similar to Drupal resisting JavaScript. Instead, I'm observing that my most productive engagements are the ones in which there's a collaborative spirit of leaning towards new ideas and suggestions, even if they need adjustment, or even if they might not make the cut. I don't mind facing the headwinds of criticism and doubt, but when my suggestions seem to be belittled, or when my capacity as a designer, again, is seemingly questioned or diminished, it makes me wonder if the underlying, true, message is that my contributions are actually not welcome and should be taken elsewhere.

On behalf of the thousands of UI designers upon whom the world depends, I take umbrage with characterizing UI design as the least of the world's software design problems. But I will otherwise ignore it because it is irrelevant to my original point, which was about the "truth" in the interface, which you seem willing to accept as a "lie" for "practical" reasons, which is your wont to do. I prefer to stay stuck in my theoretical bubble if it allows me to pursue increasing honest or accuracy with the users of software that I design or contribute to. On the contrary, I am interested in expanding the use cases and generative outcomes that users of Alfred perceive based on the accuracy of its interface. That Apple hasn't made this shift in the General preference pane doesn't mean that Alfred wouldn't benefit its users by indicating that routing via URL schemes is an increasingly common pattern, and that URL schemes may be handled by native apps and not just "web browsers". A more compelling argument (that would take into consideration your metaphorical "negative numbers") would be that all apps should now and forever forth be considered "browsers" because any app can register one or more URL schemes into LaunchServices and thus can be refined according to the previous paradigm without disrupting it. This is more akin to expanding the set of "counting numbers" to the set of all "real numbers", which is more inclusive and still as accurate. -- Regardless, if you didn't like my proposal, you could have just plainly said so without disparaging me as a "fellow designer".

Exactly — which is why I was pointing out that the Alfred UI isn't entirely accurate.

I don't understand this statement. I was literally trying to use the feature when I encountered this limitation... I wanted to use craftdocs:// as the URL scheme and set the "opener" to Craft (i.e. not a browser). I assumed (since this has been the case in the past) that the browser would first attempt to open the URL, but then detecting an unfamiliar URL scheme, would hand off to the OS. I just wanted to skip the browser being in the middle of the request to speed things up.

Thanks for letting me know... it should be easy enough for folks to change the keyboard shortcuts in Alfred if they like, no?

I see, you're right! Perhaps it's a matter of improving the UI? Because it looks like it'll open in a browser by default, rather than letting macOS route the request to the corresponding app directly. Maybe this should be called "Default browser opener override" (or something more elegant) since the default behavior is actually NOT to open in the default browser set in System Preference's General pane (unless it's a web address), but to instead open it with the app that supports the designated scheme (e.g. craftdocs://).

Glad I inspired you! 😅 Very creative theme!

With Catalyst apps and the rising popularity of native app deeplinking on the Mac, it seems like Alfred could better support routing x-callbacks or deeplinks directly to the corresponding native apps, rather than going through a browser first. Specifically, in Open URL workflow objects — rather than assuming that a browser is necessary — routing to a browser could be offered as an option that is enabled. The current still works, but it seems like Alfred should anticipate this change and get in front of it...

Yes! Eurostar or Eurostile will both work too.

It doesn't exist. You'll have to create multiple keywords and link each of them manually.

List them at the bottom, perhaps? Seems similar to the right click menu in macOS, which lists registered services from different installed apps:

You can also set it as a fallback result so that it always appears (at the bottom of the Default Results panel): Select Ecosia from your Custom Searches: And now it'll always appear:

As I understand it, that's actually an option:

Ah true, nice! But yeah, I'd be content with a modifier (option + →) to action the first item in the Default Actions list... Will you also enable drag-to-reorder this list?

Yes, exactly. I want to search for an app in Alfred and then immediately show its most recently opened files. But thanks for the suggestion!

I know that other launchers have this capability and maybe I'm just missing the incantation, but is there a way to access an app's recent documents w/o first going through this intermediary menu? Say, by holding a modifier and pressing →?

Whohoo! Spotted in Alfred 4.3.1 [1208]