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Problems accessing "Left" application


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Alfred 3.6.1 + Powerpack

macOS 10.13.6 (beta)

 

Hello. I've just installed the "Left" application from https://hundredrabbits.itch.io/left

It seems to be a proper Mac application rather than a plain Unix executable, and under the hood, it seems to be an Electron app, like several other on my system. However, when I fire up Alfred and type "L" or "Le"... (or, well you get the drift!) I do not see the Left application listed. Is this some kind of judgement by Alfred that the "Left" name is somehow too generic, too common, even? I even tried rebooting my system to try and give things a chance to settle down but to no avail.

 

What can the problem be?

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Most likely, Alfred just hasn't noticed it's installed yet. Enter "reload" into Alfred and run the "Reload Alfred Cache" action. If it's a proper app bundle, Alfred should then find it. Note, it will take a few seconds for Alfred to find all your apps, so be a bit patient.

 

It doesn't matter than the app is based on Electron, only that it's packaged as a proper Mac app bundle.

 

 

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First of all, does Spotlight find it? Alfred uses the same index as Spotlight, so check if it appears in Spotlight so we can determine whether it's an indexing issue or an Alfred issue.

 

Also, where is the app installed? In /Applications?

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Strangely I cannot get Spotlight to open anything. It's the first time I've tried to use it for obvious reasons. I've tried on several different apps in /Applications but it cannot find a thing. Alarmingly, now, after the reload, Alfred only appears to be able to access workflows, not applications.

 

"Left" is installed in /Applications.

 

Edited by carlcaulkett
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I've just tried that. I followed a google tip to add a folder to the exclude list and then to delete it again, thus forcing an index rebuild. When I selected the folder I got the error: "Privacy

List Error, The item couldn’t be added or removed because of an unknown error."  I couldn't find anything else useful to do in that window.

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I'm using macOS 10.13.6 which admittedly is a beta version, and Alfred 3.6.1.

 

To be fair, before trying the "reload Alfred cache", Alfred (and by implication, Spotlight) *worked* apart from the inability to find the *one* application.

 

Since then, the application of different Alfred options has made the  Alfred and Spotlight not work and be in a state where it is apparently irreparable. My system wasn't messed up before this episode. Now it is.

 

I'm not trying to blame you, Dean,  I'm simply trying to judge this scientifically, and my understanding of the basic laws of cause and effect tells me that my problems have, at least, a connection of some kind with Alfred.

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1 minute ago, carlcaulkett said:

I'm not trying to blame you, Dean

 

I am sorry that my (standard for the situation) advice has messed things up even more for you.

 

I'm afraid you'll have to wait till Andrew is about in the morning (it's 1 a.m. in the UK), I'm afraid. He wrote Alfred and likely has 10.13.6. He'll have a much better idea of what is or may be going wrong. In the meantime, I guess you could try another reboot and rebuilding the Spotlight index from the command line. That would eliminate Alfred from the equation.

 

These days, I personally won't install major upgrades of macOS until the next one is close to coming out. They're just too buggy.

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Hey there, I'm actually still up fiddling with a few 10.14 things :) 

 

None of the troubleshooting steps we suggest (or @deanishe has suggested) will disable your spotlight server, or give you the lower level errors you describe. It sounds like the issue started before you even tried to troubleshoot, and this is why "Left" wasn't found by Alfred (or Spotlight). This could be related to using the macOS Beta, worse things have been know to happen with the macOS metadata index.

 

I think your best bet would be to unload and reload the metadata index. Pop these two commands into Terminal:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Then try rebuilding the macOS metadata index using the shortcut in Alfred's Advanced preferences. Be sure to select to delete the /.Spotlight-V100 folder as this will clear out any corruption (which is usually a cause of a systematic failure of the metadata index).

 

Hope this helps!

 

Cheers,

Andrew

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1 hour ago, carlcaulkett said:

I did the 'Reload" thing and Alfred reindexed everything. It took a good few minutes. Now Alfred is up and running again, and it still cannot find "Left"!

 

It's worth mentioning that when you type 'Reload' into Alfred, this clears the Application cache and doesn't actually trigger Alfred to reindex them. Any Applications should be found instantly after this, and if they aren't, there is something up with the macOS metadata index.

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16 minutes ago, Andrew said:

Hey there, I'm actually still up fiddling with a few 10.14 things :) 

 

Sadly I don't think I'm going to be able to move to Mojave. I've got a "Cheesegrater" Apple Mac Pro (early 2009) on which I upgraded the firmware from 4.1 to 5.1 thus enabling me to run 10.13.6. However, due to my processor's lack of Metal capability, I think it's the end of the line. It's still a decent machine with 32 GB of RAM and it cost me £500 a year ago and ended my involvement with Windows forever!  I do like VSCode for coding, however, so I haven't entirely forsaken Microsoft though.

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I tried to disable and then enable the Spotlight server with

`sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist`

followed by

`sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist`

followed by

`sudo mdutil -E -i on /` (the equivalent of clicking the macOS metadata index button)

 

This gave the "Spotlight server is disabled." message.

 

For some reason, the second of the three commands above doesn't seem to be starting the  Spotlight server (I am assuming this is what is supposed to happen here).

 

Any ideas, folks?

 

I'm off to bed. If you haven't already, I suggest you do the same!

Edited by carlcaulkett
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Sadly I've been forced to uninstall Alfred. I'll try it again when I get a more stable macOS release installed. For now, I'm using Quicksilver, which while not nearly as streamlined and pretty as Alfred, does have the advantage of not being reliant on the underlying Spotlight mechanism. Might be an option for the future, what do you think, @Andrew?

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1 hour ago, carlcaulkett said:

Might be an option for the future

 

Extraordinarily unlikely, I'd say. It would be a huge effort, a reduplication of something the system already offers, and to what ends? I mean, there seems little reason to expect future betas of macOS to never break any of the other system APIs Alfred relies on.

 

Quicksilver and LaunchBar have their own indexers because they predate mds/Spotlight.

 

You've got a Cheesegrater with four HDD bays. Why not install beta OSes on a different drive, so when something important inevitably breaks, you ain't stuck with a borked machine?

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