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octothorpe

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  1. @vitor This is all very interesting and I'll try it when I have some time to futz around. Thanks much for writing it up and offering to help. In the meantime, I would very much suggest that Alfred by default move its prefs somewhere besides the Documents folder. Any Mac user who has their Documents and Desktop folders set to iCloud Drive, and has Optimize Storage set, may well have their Alfred prefs go missing from time to time. These are two very common iCloud settings.
  2. iCloud Drive is very frustrating for this. One one of my Macs I have iCloud set to sync Documents and Desktop folders -- which ends up including Alfred's preferences. I don't have enough room on the Mac to keep my whole 1 TB of files downloaded, so I have to use Optimize Storage. Thing is -- and this is definitely iCloud Drive's fault -- it seems to purge the Alfred preferences very frequently. Even when there are other neighboring files that are larger or much less often used, somehow the sync system sees fit to boot Alfred.alfredpreferences first. Unfortunately there's no way to "pin" a file, so I just end up manually downloading the preferences over and over to keep Alfred running. I did notice that this preferences file shows a modification date many years old. Although its contents are frequently updated, the file looks in the Finder as if it hasn't been touched in the 9+ years I've been using (and paying for) Alfred. Is there any way to have Alfred game this logic a bit and make it clear when it's modified Alfred.alfredpreferences, which would hopefully keep it from being auto-purged so much? Alfred is a Mac-specific app, and like it or not iCloud is a very deeply integrated part of MacOS at this point. Anything Alfred can do to play along with it better would be much appreciated by us iCloud Drive users.
  3. Thanks for the clarification. iCloud does have weird roadbumps and is not particularly transparent about what it's doing. When it works, it works brilliantly but as @luckman212 points out, it's maddening to troubleshoot when it doesn't. For what it's worth, the only issue I ever run into is iCloud Drive purging my local copy of Alfred's settings. Once syncing is re-established I see changes in my Alfred settings sync between my Macs more or less instantly. I still think Alfred should provide some mechanism for syncing its settings between Macs. I don't think it's a great user experience to say, essentially, "install Dropbox or maybe try something else. Good luck!" I'm an avid user of Things, which seems to manage quite nicely with its own sync service. Before that, I used Omnifocus, which similarly handles sync itself on its own terms. If Apple's inbuilt sync service is problematic for Alfred to use, I think an alternative should be provided to paying users.
  4. I have two Macs, and I like to have Alfred running on both. I would like the preferences to sync between the two. The sync settings help page basically just tells me I can either 1) install Dropbox or 2) use iCloud Drive only if Optimize Storage is disabled. Unfortunately I can't disable it because I don't have room on my secondary Mac. Since I'm not willing to install and run Dropbox continually just for Alfred, I'm in a bind. Under iCloud's Optimized Storage, Alfred's preferences are often the only thing in the folder they're in that gets purged. When I look at the file's modification date, I see it's many years old. Is there some way at least that Alfred can modify this file in such a way that iCloud Drive regards it as "actively used" so it doesn't get purged? As an aside, why does Alfred not support some kind of proper built-in syncing mechanism? I find it just a bit frustrating that sync is left to the user to sort out. Pretty much every other app on my Mac uses iCloud and it works well generally. If Agenda and Ulysses and half the other applications I own can do this, why can't Alfred after all these years and all these PowerPack upgrades?
  5. Weird. I don't recall having had this problem last year, but it's possible I just didn't notice. (I'm in the US, but I've never understood starting the calendar week on Sunday when the work and school week, for most, starts on Monday.)
  6. In my Date & Time settings, the week is set to start on Monday instead of Sunday -- maybe that has something to do with it?
  7. Well, that was a quick and easy fix, thanks much! I suppose this thread should be moved elsewhere since it was a case of simple misconfiguration.
  8. * What you were doing when the issue happened I was using a snippet I have which pastes in the current date in YYYY-MM-DD format. Instead of pasting "2021-12-30" as expected, it pasted "2022-12-30" A snippet I have that uses {date:full} pastes in the correct date "Thursday, December 30, 2021" Been using these snippets for at least a couple years without issue. * Whether you were able to replicate it a second time by performing the same action Yes. It occurs with any snippet I have set up that uses {date:YYYY} or {date:YY} * Include any screenshots that might help us see below * Include the Alfred version & build number you are using Alfred 4.6.1 * Include your macOS version macOS 12.1 * Troubleshooting steps I've taken - checked the system clock in the Date & Time preferences (it was correct) - quit and re-opened Alfred
  9. hi, I've got two Macs, both new, both running Big Sur 11.5.1. Alfred is installed on both machines, and I'm keeping the preferences synced. On my iMac, when I trigger a text snippet, it does not automatically paste into whatever text editor I'm using. The snippet does come to the clipboard, so if I hit ⌘-V to paste, it appears. On my MacBook Air, the snippet automatically pastes correctly as it's always done for me. On the iMac, I've triple-checked the OS permissions Alfred asks for and they're all set correctly. I also carefully compared Alfred's Snippets settings on both Macs (screenshot attached) and they're identical. I must be missing something, though because my snippets aren't working right.
  10. Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but it seems this fast user switching workflow has (after all these years) stopped working under Big Sur. Anybody have a good, current workflow that lets one quickly switch users using Alfred?
  11. Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I've been using iCloud Drive to sync Alfred preferences for maybe six months and it's working just fine for me. The "pinning" feature doesn't seem to exist in Catalina but I've found that once I right-clicked the Alfred Preferences folder and picking "Download Now" the folder has stayed reliably synced -- even though I don't have room on this Mac to turn off Optimize Storage. The one thing I do miss from Dropbox was the selective sync controls. It's become bloatware otherwise, though, and I'm glad to be rid of it. I'll add here that I also keep my Sublime Text preferences synced through iCloud Drive (using some symlinking of folders) and that, too, works reliably and quickly. Yep. I got that feeling too. It's not just this thread either. Kind of offputting!
  12. I just wanted to chime in here. I have a couple of Macs that I bounce between (and separate work/personal user accounts on both machines) so syncing Alfred prefs is very important to me. I used Dropbox for this for quite a few years but as Dropbox has bloated out from a simple sync utility to some god-awful... whatever it's trying to be now, I've migrated all my files over to iCloud Drive. Alfred was one of the last things I used Dropbox for (heeding the dire warnings Alfred throws out about iCloud) but some months back I finally pulled the plug on Dropbox and moved Alfred's preferences into iCloud Drive. And it's working just fine. On my iMac, I have the luxury of turning "optimize storage" to OFF so everything is locally downloaded, but I don't have space for that on my MacBook. I right-clicked the folder containing Alfred's preferences (and a few others) to Download Now and it did and it seems to have stayed downloaded. I definitely miss Dropbox's selective sync controls, but in my experience iCloud Drive seems to do its best to keep on hand files that get used the most. Anyway, I post this for users who need settings sync and have a tolerance for trying something new. iCloud Drive works, in my experience.
  13. Aha, this did the trick. It also solved another issue I was having related to snippets not working. I'll post in the other thread as well. Thanks!
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