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octothorpe

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Posts posted by octothorpe

  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. 4 hours ago, Vero said:

    As I mentioned earlier, in our tests, we saw iCloud sync data slowly or not sync at all for a long period of time. This can lead to file conflicts if you've edited your workflow or snippets collection on your second Mac - and iCloud handles these file conflicts terribly compared to other sync services. 

     

    If you have preferred alternative services to Dropbox, go ahead and try them out. The requirements are that it's 1. A service that keeps your data on your Mac at all times, not just a virtual file reference, and 2. Is available at startup.

     

    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. 3 minutes ago, deanishe said:


    It shouldn't: the appropriate standard also starts the week on Monday.
     

    AFAIK, starting the week on a Sunday is another one of those bizarre Americanisms. Other people don't do it that way.

     

    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. * 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
     
    787826126_ScreenShot2021-12-30at12_31_33PM.thumb.png.641416a03adecdaa5f2bc93bc7feab7c.png
    2084014835_ScreenShot2021-12-30at12_31_45PM.thumb.png.6ccac68cb7c3c2b707e86991e371d304.png
  7. 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.

    Screen Shot 2021-08-04 at 7.15.01 PM.png

  8. On 6/22/2019 at 3:36 PM, Bruno Scheele said:

    Looks like macOS Catalina allows this functionality without having to resort to Dropbox. You can now 'Pin' files and folders in iCloud, which presumably keeps them local, regardless of your Mac optimisation.

     

    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.  

     

    On 6/22/2019 at 3:36 PM, Bruno Scheele said:

    Just have to mention that the "expert" answers in this thread are probably on the mark, but felt hostile and like gatekeeping. Throwing that critique out there, do with it what you will.

     

    Yep. I got that feeling too. It's not just this thread either. Kind of offputting! 

  9. 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. 

  10. 10 hours ago, Andrew said:

    @octothorpe  try quitting Alfred, then removing him from the macOS Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility preferences, and re-adding him back again. If there is an underlying mismatch in the macOS privacy prefs, Alfred may have been blocked from simulating a lock.

     

    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!

     

     

     

  11. 9 hours ago, Vero said:

    @octothorpe Edited to add: I see you're talking about pasting from the viewer rather than expanding... In that case, if you make TextEdit your frontmost window, and try pasting a snippet there, do you get the expected behaviour? It's best to test in a basic native app, as a third-party app or browser window might have some other funky stuff going on that affects the ability to paste to it.

     

     

    Yes, exactly -- I'm interested in the pasting option, which has always worked brilliantly for me in any app. And for that I've never had "automatically expand..." checked. 

     

    I just tested in TextEdit and it doesn't work. The list comes up normally in Alfred, but nothing ever gets pasted in. 

  12. Not sure why or how, but none of my snippets work any more. I can bring them up just fine in the Alfred window as I always have, but when I select one and hit return it fails to paste into my text as it always has before.

     

    I'm working on a brand new MacBook I just got, which I migrated everything into from a Time Machine backup (using Migration Assistant). I insured that all of Alfred's requested permissions have been granted. All my preferences look the same way they always have, so I'm a bit stumped. 

  13. On 5/11/2020 at 11:05 AM, Andrew said:

    @Joe Littlejohn You can disable the built-in lock keyword, then create a simple workflow with a Keyword -> Dispatch Key Combo.

     

    Set the keyword to "lock", and the key combo to whatever you'd like it to be!

     

    Sure, that's a workaround -- but the built-in command seems to now be broken.

     

    I'm on 10.15.4 and seeing the same issue. Just used the built-in "lock" command and nothing happens. I know I've used it in the past successfully. I'm not using Karabiner or any other key remapping software. 

  14.  

    13 minutes ago, vitor said:

    Alfred Preferences → Features → Default Results → Search Scope. Check if ~/Library/Mobile Documents is present. If it’s not, add it.

     

    Yep, that search scope is in there. As I said, other files in iCloud Drive are showing, but this one isn't and I think it's related to the fact that I renamed it.

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