Find app blocking keyboard shortcut

[Roman Schindlauer]

Hello,

 

I am trying to assign a keyboard shortcut to a workflow, but it seems to be in use, since it is not accepted by the input field. However, I don't see that shortcut (shift-cmd-N) used in the system's keyboard preferences. Is there any way to find the culprit?

 

What's puzzling is that this shortcut has actually been assigned to the workflow before, then stopped working with some error. I couldn't debug it in Alfred, assigned a different one, which works, but can't assign it back to the shortcut I originally had. Maybe a restart would help, but in general I'd find a solution to my question above useful.

 

Thanks,
Roman

[vitor]

⌘⇧N is a common shortcut. Many apps use it. But to see if it’s another Workflow doing it, Alfred Preferences → cog on top left → Show Hotkeys.

 

1 hour ago, Roman Schindlauer said:

Maybe a restart would help

 

You should really do that. Computers are weird and sometimes things stop working for seemingly no reason and start working again with a reboot. Just today on this very forum ↩ stopped working for me when writing. Had to refresh the page for it to start working again.

[Roman Schindlauer]

Thanks Vitor--quitting and restarting Alfred resolved the issue

[mdlyen]

I have a similar issue around some shortcuts that I cannot trigger.  Examples are Cmd/Option/Control-A, Cmd/Option/Control-T.

 

Here are my troubleshooting steps:

 

1. Uninstalled BetterTouchTool (I did have some of these mapped through that app).

2. Uninstalled and reinstalled Alfred.

3. Restarted my Mac multiple times.

4. Looked through the Keyboard preferences to see if anything conflicted.

5. Rebuild macOS Metadata (in Advanced)

6. Clear Application Cache (in Advanced)

 

It appears that I'm able to set other combinations of CMD/OPTION/CONTROL, but not A, C, L, M, S or T.  Anyway to figure out what keyboard shortcuts are in use in the system?  Anyway to reset all of them?

[vitor]

@mdlyen Those are incredibly common shortcuts for apps, not system shortcuts. Unless you plan on remapping shortcuts for every app, don’t use such common ones. Throw some extra modifiers in there.

[mdlyen]

Sorry, I was just trying to shortcut the typing.  I'm actually talking about the following:

 

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-A

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-C

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-L

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-M

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-S

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-T

 

Some others work:

 

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-O

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-N

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-R

CMD/OPTION/CONTROL-G

 

[vitor]

@mdlyen I understood the first time. My answer is the same.

[mdlyen]

Well then I'm confused.  I thought I was putting three modifiers together Cmd/Control/Option with a key and you are saying that is common?  What workflow keystrokes would you recommend then?

 

I ended up setting up BetterTouchTool to use these hot keys and launch the apps I needed and it is working great, so I'm not sure why Alfred refuses to use them but BTT uses them without issue.

 

It seems like a utility that could tell you which apps are capturing hot keys would be useful, but maybe impossible to make.  Would be cool though.  Thanks for your help.

[deanishe]

If you write CMD/CTRL/OPT, most people will assume you mean CMD or CTRL or OPT because slashes mean "or", not "and". Especially when you use a different character (-) to mean "plus this key", like you did.

 

Edited April 23, 2017 by deanishe

[mdlyen]

Gotcha. Sorry for the confusion.

 

So it should be Command+Control+Option+A?

[deanishe]

That's clear. I can't answer your question, though.