Gary King

When I create a File Filter, my search query is only matched against the filenames of all the available files in the filter. How can I also match the query against the paths of every file, as well?

So if a file is at "Videos/Funny.mp4" and I search "funny" then this will match, but "Videos Funny" will not match, even though I want it to.

Since I upgraded to MacOS Ventura, icons for files like .mp4 and .doc in Alfred do not appear.

I've attached screenshots showing how an .mp4 file does not have an icon in Alfred, but has the VLC icon in Finder.

How can I get the icons to appear for all file types, including video files, in Alfred?

It's possible that the behavior changed between one Mac OS version to another, because I did upgrade my MacOS recently. Here's my timeline of recent events:

- 2014 to July 8, 2022: I was using a Mac Mini 2012, running MacOS Catalina up until the end.
- July 9, 2022: I migrated to a Mac Mini 2020, running MacOS Monterey (therefore skipping over Big Sur).
- July 24, 2022: I upgraded from Alfred 4 to Alfred 5.
- July 25, 2022: I noticed that changing Alfred data from outside of Alfred was not being reflected by Alfred. It's possible this issue existed since I upgraded to Monterey on July 9, but I first noticed the issue on this date, July 25.

Yes, unsurprisingly, if the workflow is symlinked, and I swap to another commit, then the workflow data is not updated, but if I delete the symlink and re-create it, then the data is updated in Alfred. That would be the equivalent of removing and adding the workflow back to Alfred, so I imagine that it's expected that Alfred would read the whole workflow upon such an action.

I have had my workflows symlinked to Alfred for years, and in Alfred 4, it had no problems immediately updating workflow data, even from symlinked workflows.

The issue appears to be caused by the fact that I'm symlinking my workflows in. Specifically, in the `/Users/gary/Library/Application Support/Alfred/Alfred.alfredpreferences/workflows` directory, I have several normal folders in there for workflows, and I have a handful of symlinks in there, which point to other directories on the same volume, for other workflows that I also have.

I tested the issue by creating a new workflow in Alfred, and then creating two commits that changed the Alfred data. When I swapped between the commits, the Alfred data was updated instantly. However, when I then moved this workflow to another directory, and symlinked it back in, performing the same test did not update Alfred, indicating that the issue is caused by the fact that the workflow uses a symlink.

Is it possible for you to fix this in Alfred? Rather than requiring that all projects needing to be moved to the Alfred dir. Of course I would prefer to continue using my symlinked approach for workflows, if possible.

Thanks, that would be great. 

Just now, I checked out from Git an older commit for my Alfred workflow, and I had to restart Alfred for it to identify the change. I assume that Alfred is caching the values for an improvement in performance, but it's costing development time for workflows. It would be nice to have an option for developers to immediately update the workflow cache.

I'm not syncing prefs. I'm on Alfred 5.0.1.

I have a "Keyword" workflow item with "ica" as the shortcut, which leads to a "Run Script" item. Depending on the branch in my Git repo, the "Run Script" value will be different. 

If I check out another branch, then the value in "Run Script" only updates when I close the Alfred preferences window and re-open in. In Alfred 4, however, I simply had to click on another workflow then click back to the original workflow, for the "Run Script" value to update.

In addition, after closing and opening the Alfred preferences window, the "Run Script" value is indeed updated, but most importantly, using the "ica" keyword still executes the previous "Run Script" value, according to the Alfred debugger.

@Vero Thanks that seems to have worked. Is there a faster way to refresh workflow items than closing and re-opening Alfred preferences though? Such as either a Command-R refresh shortcut, or clicking on another workflow then clicking back to the original workflow.

I have a workflow in Alfred 5, with a Run Script item. This workflow is also in a Git repository.

While working on the workflow, I'll occasionally swap to another branch, which also changes the code run in the Run Script item. Previously in Alfred 4, after I changed Git branches and run the Run Script item, the new value would be used immediately.

However now with Alfred 5, the value for this Run Script item only updates after I restart Alfred.

How can I make Alfred automatically update the value, rather than using a cached copy? This makes debugging workflows more difficult now, in Alfred 5 compared to Alfred 4.

Also, in addition, paths on external drives are shown correctly within Alfred workflows, such as when selecting paths for a File Filter's scope. They appear as "/Volumes/External/Media/" rather than "/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/External/Media/".

In addition, if I search for the "External" drive itself, then its path shows as "/Volumes/External/" rather than including any of the additional prepended text.

Is this issue, where the full paths are shown in File Filter results but not in File Filter scopes, only in my copy of Alfred, or is it just how Alfred operates for all users?

Thanks again, in advance!

The reason that I ask if it's possible for Alfred to remove the excess prepended text, is primarily because it makes the path longer.

The problem is that when I search for a file on my external drive, and there are multiple copies, then I need to refer to the path to determine which copy I am looking for. If the path is too long, then the most relevant portion of the path, which is the right-most portion, is cut off in Alfred, so I can't tell which of the results I'm actually looking for.

Okay, I understand that.

But isn't it also the case where applications are located at both "/Applications/Programming/Docker.app" and "/System/Volumes/Data/Applications/Programming/Docker.app", and Alfred chooses the suppress the second one in favor of the first one? Would it not be possible to at least show the shortened path for files on an external drive, but still use the absolute path when copying it?

Is this issue only applicable to APFS volumes, and not to HFS+ partitions?

I have several file filters that search for items on an external drive. The external drive previously consisted of a single HFS+ partition called "External". Today, non-destructively converted the partition to the APFS format. I also moved around the drive's root folders a bit, to better organize them.

Since then, when I use a file filter in Alfred 4.7 to find files on this drive, the filter works fine, and finds and opens items fine, but all the paths are prepended in a peculiar way. For instance, if the item is located at "/Volumes/External/Media/funny-video.mp4", then its path would appear in Alfred as "/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/External/Media/funny-video.mp4". This only started happening after the changes I made above. I suspect the issue is more related to the APFS conversion, rather than the re-organization.

What can I do to get the simplified path back, so that each path is not prepended with the additional text of "/System/Volumes/Data/"? Would re-indexing the Spotlight library help? I already tried running "reload" in Alfred, but it did not fix the problem.

8 hours ago, deanishe said:

 

It sounds like the metadata indexer is running a bit slow on your machine. Presumably, it's not showing up in the File Filter immediately because you're filtering by filetype, but the the file's type isn't available until it's indexed.

Have you ever seen a case like this before? Is there anything I can do about it? I have a decently powerful Mac, considering its age of a few years. It's got an i7 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and an SSD. This issue I'm experiencing happens every time I create a new .code-workspace file; the metadata seems to take a few minutes to populate.

The issue is related to waiting for Spotlight to provide metadata for new files, right? I just created a new text file, and I checked its metadata 1 second later; there's no metadata. But 2 seconds later, there's metadata. So that seems fine. But if I do the same with a .code-workspace file, then it still takes a few minutes to populate its metadata. Is there something wrong with this particular type of file? How would I fix that?

Hello! After several years, I still have this problem.

I've run `mdls` to inspect one file that does not appear in a File Filter, and another that does.

The file type I'm filtering for, in the File Filter, is `dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80g55eqy01s55wrr31a2pdqy` (which corresponds to the file extension of `.code-workspace` for VS Code workspace files).

The `mdls` output for a file that appears in the results is:

kMDItemContentCreationDate         = 2018-03-26 01:00:14 +0000
kMDItemContentCreationDate_Ranking = 2018-03-26 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemContentModificationDate     = 2019-11-11 20:35:24 +0000
kMDItemContentType                 = "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80g55eqy01s55wrr31a2pdqy"
kMDItemContentTypeTree             = (
    "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge80g55eqy01s55wrr31a2pdqy",
    "public.data",
    "public.item"
)
kMDItemDateAdded                   = 2018-03-26 01:00:14 +0000
kMDItemDateAdded_Ranking           = 2018-03-26 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemDisplayName                 = "Project.code-workspace"
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate         = 2019-11-11 20:35:24 +0000
kMDItemFSCreationDate              = 2018-03-26 01:00:14 +0000
kMDItemFSCreatorCode               = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags               = 0
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon             = (null)
kMDItemFSInvisible                 = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden         = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery              = (null)
kMDItemFSLabel                     = 0
kMDItemFSName                      = "Project.code-workspace"
kMDItemFSNodeCount                 = (null)
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID              = 20
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID               = 501
kMDItemFSSize                      = 377
kMDItemFSTypeCode                  = ""
kMDItemInterestingDate_Ranking     = 2020-02-15 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemKind                        = "Visual Studio Code - Insiders document"
kMDItemLastUsedDate                = 2020-02-15 18:27:26 +0000
kMDItemLastUsedDate_Ranking        = 2020-02-15 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemLogicalSize                 = 377
kMDItemPhysicalSize                = 4096
kMDItemUseCount                    = 598
kMDItemUsedDates                   = (
    "2020-02-15 05:00:00 +0000"
)

And the output for one that doesn't appear in the results is:

kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = (null)
kMDItemFSCreationDate      = (null)
kMDItemFSCreatorCode       = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags       = (null)
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon     = (null)
kMDItemFSInvisible         = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = (null)
kMDItemFSIsStationery      = (null)
kMDItemFSLabel             = (null)
kMDItemFSName              = (null)
kMDItemFSNodeCount         = (null)
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID      = (null)
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID       = (null)
kMDItemFSSize              = (null)
kMDItemFSTypeCode          = ""

Clearly something is wrong here! But is there anything that I, or Alfred, can do about this? The latter file appears file in a normal file search, in both Spotlight and Alfred. But it doesn't appear in the File Filter, since I'm filtering for a something type of file, and apparently, even though this file has the correct file extension (.code-workspace), it doesn't have the correct metadata.

The weird thing is, after 10 minutes, the metadata gets populated for the file. But of course, I'd like to be able to create a file, and access it in Alfred, immediately.

I think since updating to Alfred 4.0.7, which came out on Dec. 17, I've got some apps that no longer appear.

Sometimes, I'll have apps outside of the /Applications dir, so I create a shortcut to them in the /Applications dir. But those shortcuts no longer appear in Alfred.

Also, one specific app, JDiskReport.app, no longer appears in Alfred, even though it's in my Applications dir.

These missing items appear fine in Spotlight.

On 6/12/2019 at 5:32 AM, Andrew said:

@georgexsh try dragging the alias file to Alfred's Features > Default Results > Advanced to add the alias file as a default type Alfred searches for.

That didn't help for me. Got any other suggestions?

Perhaps similar to this issue.

If I type too fast, then extra results that should not match, still appear, for a File Filter.

If I type `term`, then one particular item appears. But I have a File Filter for `ter` which searches within a specific folder, yet the item from the first search still appears if I type too fast. In the GIF, you can see me type fast first, then slow.

Great thanks! Was it a weird extreme edge case or something?

If I'm typing too fast during a File Filter search, and I type a space, then Alfred can't find any results. Only when I start typing letters again will it find results. I don't have a problem if I type too slowly. 

Animated GIF attached.

It turns out that the problem was I needed to uncheck "Source files" on the File Search > Search page.

Thanks, I tried it earlier, but the path I used must have had some messed up characters. It works now.

Is it possible to open any file on my Mac, by pasting the full path to a file into Alfred?

The closest I know of is the `open` command, which I think only searches the specified folders in Alfred, so it doesn't actually allow for "any" path?

Running "reload" seems to usually fix it. I'll report back if things are still not working well. Thanks!