Alfred doesn't seem to find Apple Notes

[quikatb]

 

Hello,

 

I can't seem to get Alfred to return the contents of Apple notes in the search results. It works fine with Spotlight. I have included ~library/containers/com.apple.notes in my search scope in Alfred. Is this a configuration issue or a known limitation of Alfred? Any ideas or suggestions?

 

Thanks,

Tim

[Vero]

@quikatb Hi Tim, Apologies for the slow response on this post! Seems I've missed this one.

 

I've got a workflow that's ideal for searching for Notes on your Mac:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j6wbatzyd42m780/Search Notes on your Mac.alfredworkflow?dl=0

 

The file type (com.apple.notes.externalrecord) isn't included in default results. Depending on how much content is stored in your Notes, a workflow ensures that notes are only searched when relevant and don't clutter up your default results.

 

Simply type "notes" followed by keywords included in the title or content of your note, and you'll see the results appear

 

 

Cheers,

Vero

[quikatb]

Great thank you Vero. If I add com.apple.notes.externalrecord to my default search criteria will Alfred always search Notes.app?

 

Tim

[Vero]

@quikatb The file type and the search scope would both be required, but I'd recommend against it. It's likely to make your results unnecessarily noisy if there are more than a few notes in there.

 

Cheers,
Vero

[Rob Damto]

Works great...thank you!

[John G]

@Vero @Rob Damto Is this still working for you? I am on High Sierra 10.13.1 and it doesn't work for me.

[Vero]

@JohnG According to the creator of an even better Apple Notes workflow than mine, in High Sierra, Apple has changed the way notes are stored, storing them all in a single database rather than as individual files.

 

@surrealroad mentioned he would be investigating how to work with this new format:

 

In the meantime, I noticed that fellow Twitter users suggested the Evernote workflow. This is a brilliant workflow, and a great way to search synced notes (and in my personal experience, I've found more reliable than Apple's Notes), so may be a suitable stop gap until a Notes workflow is updated for High Sierra.

 

Cheers,

Vero

 

[John G]

Bummer. Right, the Evernote workflows work for Evernote, but I need to be able to search Apple Notes. Thanks anyway. Should have looked into this before I purchased Alfred.

Edited November 30, 2017 by John G

[PeterZZ]

I am also interested in searching in Notes.app via Alfread in High Sierra! 

[johnnyxhuynh]

Hello, just noticed Alfred wasn't searching Apple Notes and found this thread. My current workaround on High Sierra is to try to remember to use the build-it Spotlight (mapped to Shift+Control+Space) when I want to search for something I know is in Apple Notes. For me, that's a bunch of small random bits of information. Would prefer not to move to another solution like Evernote at this time.

 

Does anyone know if there's been any updates on this front? Thanks!

[deanishe]

6 hours ago, johnnyxhuynh said:

Does anyone know if there's been any updates on this front? Thanks!

 

You should ask in the "Share your Workflows" forum, specifically in the thread Vero linked above.

[Elden]

My issue is... I search for something mainly because I don't know where it is. If I KNEW it was in notes, it would be easy to find. But I don't necessarily know. That's why it's important to return Notes hits in the default search results. Which is why I'm going to switch from using Alfred for search back to Spotlight. To me, a search is a little useless if I already know where the data is.

[deanishe]

22 minutes ago, Elden said:

To me, a search is a little useless if I already know where the data is.

 

Bear in mind that Alfred is primarily a launcher, not a search engine.

 

It is explicitly not designed to search all your stuff (as Spotlight does) because that is exactly what enables Alfred to be so much faster than Spotlight and provide more accurate results.

 

If you have little idea where or what you're looking for is, then you should absolutely use Spotlight. If you've set up Alfred to be suitable for that task, you've basically ruined it.

 

Alfred is designed around the concept of multiple, narrowly-focussed searches, rather than a single, catch-all search. If you don't use it that way, you will be disappointed with the results.

[Regluke]

Hi there, 

 

I've been using the workflow created by Sean Ballinger (https://sball.in) http://www.packal.org/workflow/search-apple-notes to search Apple notes but since a week ago it no longer works. I've tried contacting him directly but haven't heard back anything.

 

Is there something I can do to get this workflow up and running again? 

 

Thanks

 

Reg

[deanishe]

Hi @Regluke, welcome to the forum.

 

If you have a question regarding a specific workflow—as you do—please ask in the workflow's actual thread.

There's no guarantee Sean will see this thread or read your post. If you post in the proper thread, he will be notified of your post, along with other users of the workflow, who are the best people to answer your question.

[Regluke]

Hi @deanishe,

 

I really appreciate your help, thank you! I'll try that.

[Benben]

On 3/12/2018 at 1:01 AM, Elden said:

My issue is... I search for something mainly because I don't know where it is. If I KNEW it was in notes, it would be easy to find. But I don't necessarily know. That's why it's important to return Notes hits in the default search results. Which is why I'm going to switch from using Alfred for search back to Spotlight. To me, a search is a little useless if I already know where the data is.

 

This is exactly what i feel. And no Alfred is not a "Launcher" in my opinion. no one uses Alfred as "just a Launcher".

Also, about:

On 4/26/2017 at 12:52 PM, Vero said:

@quikatb The file type and the search scope would both be required, but I'd recommend against it. It's likely to make your results unnecessarily noisy if there are more than a few notes in there.

 

Cheers,
Vero

 

I Think you can let the user choose how "noisy" or not he want's he's search results to be, just like you do with other file types, like this:

 

I'm also switching to spotlight again, because is a very main thing in my searching workflow, and it's really

disappointing that Alfred doesn't support it. i think it's really should be added.

 

 

[Kelson01]

16 minutes ago, Benben said:

 

This is exactly what i feel. And no Alfred is not a "Launcher" in my opinion. no one uses Alfred as "just a Launcher".

Also, about:

 

I Think you can let the user choose how "noisy" or not he want's he's search results to be, just like you do with other file types, like this:

 

I'm also switching to spotlight again, because is a very main thing in my searching workflow, and it's really

disappointing that Alfred doesn't support it. i think it's really should be added.

 

 

 

I don't know if this helps but I use notes daily and I use this workflow to search my apple notes.

https://github.com/sballin/alfred-search-notes-app

[.abe.]

I also am frustrated in having to switch to finder every-time that I want to find some bit of text in a Apple Note or in anywhere. This is very counter productive and I've been contemplating just disabling Alfred altogether. And I am a power pack licensee.

 

I've noticed that 1. The argumentation for 'noisy' results just doesn't hold up against NO results. 2. With Monterey Alfred often waits for some response from macOS. And the Help system does not have an option for a troubleshooter analysis routine.

[Vero]

15 hours ago, .abe. said:

I want to find some bit of text in a Apple Note or in anywhere

 

This is a forum post from 2017. Every version of macOS is different and recent OS changes have been very significant. A decade ago, searching Notes was easy, but through various macOS versions, Apple made it much more difficult and slightly hacky (with their move towards locking down user data for your privacy). It is however still possible, so here's a workflow to search Notes:

https://github.com/sballin/alfred-search-notes-app

 

You haven't specified where you're looking to search for file content; Every app stores its content data in a different way, so it's not one-size-fits-all to search all sources of data on your Mac. Depending on what you're looking to search, we might be able to point you in the right direction if you'd like to provide more details.

 

15 hours ago, .abe. said:

With Monterey Alfred often waits for some response from macOS.

 

We've been using Monterey since day one without seeing the "waiting for results from macOS" message, and you shouldn't be seeing it either. There are a few reasons you might be seeing this:

 

1. Check your search scopes, do you have old paths or network / external drives that could be causing macOS to wait to see if the network drive is available and returning results?

 

2. Have you rebuilt your Mac's index since you've encountered this issue? Rebuild and ensure you check the "Delete Spotlight-V100" checkbox during the process, so that you can have a completely fresh index for macOS to return results from. 

 

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/indexing/

 

Let us know how you get on

 

Cheers,
Vero