Search the Community

Alfred should have the ability to exclude specific folders and filetypes from global and file-filter results, much like the file-filter include functionality, but in reverse. Alfred uses Apple's search API, which is include-only. This works well most of the time, but as a result, the only way to exclude files/folders from Alfred's results is to use Spotlight's privacy settings to exclude them from OS X's index, which means they're unavailable in Spotlight and any other app that also relies on the search system (HoudahSpot etc.). In many cases, this is not a viable option. There are many situations where Alfred's whitelist approach is a PITA or useless compared to a blacklist approach. For example, I have a lot of source code, which I regularly search using Spotlight, but don't want showing up in Alfred. It would be pretty simple to fix that with a global blacklist, but it's literally impossible without. Perhaps you want to include a directory in Alfred's global search, but exclude it from a specific file filter. Perhaps you want to use a file filter to search all filetypes or subdirectories bar one or two. But without blacklisting, you're forced to explicitly include every folder/filetype but the ones you want to ignore. If that isn't enough work, you need to update your file filter every time you add a new folder or new type of file. The problem is compounded by Alfred only displaying a limited number of results: you don't even get the chance to train it to associate a certain file with a keyword because the file never makes it into the list of search results.

Hey there, Recently I wanted to exclude all .png files from my file search but I did not find a way to do so. In other words I mostly use the file search feature for searching and opening my folders. Is there a convenient way to search folders only? Thanks, Yannick

HI, I'm a huge fan of Alfred, and I use it every day for many things. In my setup, there are always a number of directories I like to exclude from Alfred's result list (such as any node_modules/ or bin/ directories). Currently, I must always manually add them to the Privacy tab in Spotlight preferences, though this is far from ideal (because I have two Macs, I must perform this chore on them both). I llooked through the Alfred docs in search of a better solution (ideally, something I could automate) and discovered the alfred:ignore Spotlight comment, which was exactly what I needed (or so I thought). However, after applying alfred:ignore (programatically, of course) to all directories I desire to exclude, I noticed something rather peculiar and counterintuitive. It seems that alfred:ignore only ignores the directories themselves (the ones to which you add alfred:ignore), but not any their subdirectories. As a result, though I no longer see the ignored root directories in Alfred, all of their subdirectories still show in the results. Things I've tried: reloading Alfred's cache via the reload keyword, and clearing Alfred's application cache under Alfred Preferences > Advanced, but neither of those options made Alfred ignore the subdirectories of the directories I've ignored. Questions: is this a bug or is this the expected behavior? And if the latter is true, then how could I tell Alfred to recursively ignore directories in a way that can be automated? I hope that all makes sense. Please let me know if I need to clarify anything. Thanks in advance, Caleb