Alfred Complete Reset after SIP enabled

[thinkingBanana]

Hey Support team, 

 

Today I enabled SIP again for my macOS High Sierra 10.13.1; suddenly my Alfred 3.5.1 decides to reset itself.

 

All the preferences are gone and all my workflows are vanished.

 

Anyway I could get them back and what is causing this problem?

 

Thanks.

[Vero]

@thinkingBanana Welcome to the forum. 

 

Could you please let me know whether you're syncing your preferences? If so, how are you syncing them? This is the most likely reason your preferences aren't appearing as expected.

 

We recommend Dropbox as the most reliable way to sync preferences. We advise against using iCloud and Google File / Google File Stream, as we've had a number of reports from users having issues with these services, as they're inconsistent in syncing and don't deal with file conflicts as gracefully.

 

If you can provide more details, I (and other community members) will be happy to help you out

 

Cheers,
Vero

[thinkingBanana]

Darn, I used iCloud syncing. Even though, shouldn't I able to somehow get it back using time machine? 

 

I rolled back to previous time stamp and it was not helping. I am pretty sure this only started to happen the day before yesterday when I enabled my SIP.

 

Thanks.

[thinkingBanana]

Since I resolved this issue, I would like to write a solution for everyone who may encounter similar issue in the future.

 

What you will need:

1. A local back up of "Alfred.alfredpreferences", even if it is corrupted

2. A copy of time machine backup of "Alfred.alfredpreferences" before it is corrupted; you should have it as long as you have time machine turned on before Alfred wipe out all settings.

 

What you will need to do:

1. Pick the "Alfred.alfredpreferences" file and enter time machine

2. Pick a time when everything was wroking fine, say a week ago

3. Roll back to that file, but don't let it override your current one. A new file called "Alfred (original).alfredpreferences" will show up in the same folder

4. Now create a new folder called "Alfred" in your Dropbox root directory (really just make a new folder somewhere, but creating it within Dropbox is recommended by Alfred)

5. Drag your newly created "Alfred (original).alfredpreferences" into the "~/Dropbox/Alfred" folder you just created, and rename the file to "Alfred.alfredpreferences"

6. Follow this instruction https://www.alfredapp.com/help/advanced/sync/ to change your sync folder to "~/Dropobx/Alfred" you just created

7. Alfred should restart and all you preferences will be back.

 

Hope it helps.

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