Gary King

I'll try to rebuild the OS X metadata as a last resort, just because it takes so much time. Or I'll do it when I'm away from my Mac. "find" works fine for "find .txt" for instance, but nothing is returned for "find .rb". My options in Spotlight itself are all good; everything is checkmarked, and there are no excluded folders. I have quick file search enabled already. Finding other files, such as with "'.txt", "'.pdf" works fine. Any other suggestions? Thanks!

I created a file called this_is_a_test.rb. I searched for it in Spotlight and Alfred. It appears in Spotlight but not Alfred. I can navigate to it just fine in Alfred through the directory browser though. I have uploaded screenshots here, including my preferences.

But that doesn't make sense. It seems like if I use the space search, then it searches the exact same things that Spotlight finds. I know this because when I search for "'.txt", then all .txt files in ~/Projects appears in Alfred just fine.

The .rb files are located in ~/Projects/. This is not in the search scope. I thought that file search, with the space, is basically the same as performing a search with Spotlight? Because these .rb files appear in the Spotlight search results, but not in the Alfred file search results.

Yeah I eventually used bundle --standalone to do that.

I managed to fix it after realizing that Alfred uses the system Ruby, so I installed all the relevant gems to there first.

Nevermind, I later realized that Alfred is using the system Ruby, whereas I usually use rvm for Ruby. So I had to install the relevant gems with the system Ruby instead, by switching to that via rvm with "rvm system".

How can I use gems in a Ruby script? Is there a step-by-step walkthrough for this? I've checked a few tutorials but there doesn't seem to be a detailed walkthrough for this.

Ah it looks like I'm getting errors, and I'm not sure why. /Library/Ruby/Site/2.0.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require': cannot load such file -- bundle/bundler/setup (LoadError) from /Library/Ruby/Site/2.0.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require' from ./main.rb:5:in `<main>'

I'm using the workflow here to learn about using Ruby in workflows, and the keyword is "test feedback". While typing that, it looks fine, but once I finish typing the whole thing, then I get the fallback results. So I can't even type any additional arguments. How do I fix this?

Is there an easy way to move large amounts of code between workflows easily? I can copy and paste one piece at a time, but I'm not sure how to move large chunks.

How can I get Alfred to find .rb files? Spotlight can find them fine, but Alfred can't, when using file search with the apostrophe.

Let's say I have a menu bar app on my Mac, like Alfred (just as an example). How can I create an Alfred keyword to click on the "Check for Updates..." item? I assume this would be best achieved by using AppleScript? And if so, how would I write the code?

Personally I think I'd rather have NO notification appear if something goes wrong, because when a notification appears, I rarely look at it. I usually perform an action, and if a notification appears within a second or two and I can see it in my peripheral vision, then that's just confirmation that what I did actually worked. So I don't mind if when something goes wrong, that the notification does not appear. The workflow and script I'm using now, I didn't write it; it's written in Bash and Python. From what I can tell, from the last line, it gets the response from a POST command and prints out its "content" field. Hopefully that field is therefore non-existent/empty when the site is down, so that the notification does not appear (I've set the notifications to only appear when {query} exists).

The .workflow files I'm referring to are actually found in my Microsoft Office folder. Automator also uses .workflow I believe. I might have to use file filters then, although I generally prefer the overall search because it just means I don't always have to remember file extensions.

Is it possible to ignore specific file extensions for File Search? I'm talking about searches with the apostrophe ('). I already checkmarked all items in "Don't show" but certain extensions like ".workflow" still appear, which clutter search results.

I've got a workflow for adding tasks to a todo website. It basically just sends a POST request to an API. When the task is added, I get a Post Notification telling me so. If the website is down when I run this workflow to add a task, then would the Post Notification still appear? Ideally, of course, either the notification does NOT appear if the site is down, so I know something went wrong; or better yet, it would tell me that something went wrong when it tried to send a POST request to the API.

In which folder on my Mac can I find my installed workflows? So I can manually back them up, etc.

I removed Contacts from my default results because they clutter it up too much. But I'd still like to access my Contacts through Alfred. Is there a way to create a keyword to search my Contacts in Alfred? Like "co <first name>" to search Contacts? Thanks in advance!

That doesn't sound intuitive to me. Shift-tab is usually meant to do the exact reverse of what Tab does; for instance when navigating menu items, Tab goes to the next menu item and Shift-Tab goes to the previous one. So Shift-Tab so instead go from the Action pane back to the results list.

For instance, if I want to find all files that match "Test" with the file extension ".pdf" then how do I do that? And if I want to find all folders called "Example" (that are folders only), how can I do that?

Waiting for Alfred to load up results from my external drives was taking too long (5 seconds each time I opened up Alfred), so I decided to remove my external drive from the default search scope, and create a new workflow to search just my external volume instead. I'll see how that works out. Hopefully, the default file search using an apostrophe ' won't be slowed down anymore, now that it no longer has to interface with my external drive at all.

Color works fine for me on Yosemite with Alfred 2.5 (299). But glad it works for you now. I generally like to stick with a stable release rather than a beta version if possible.

Ah excellent, thanks for the explanation. I guess I'll stick with the "recommended" way for now. At first I wasn't used to the recommended Fuzzy Capital Letters, which seemed more restrictive than Quicksilver's "match anything, anywhere". But I got used to it; I guess it's helpful because the results are less muddled with incorrect results.

Any chance for this yet, in Yosemite? Or with the lack of responses, I'm guessing no API is still available for this? Bummer.