Snippets stopped working in Mojave

[Rebecca]

I upgraded to Mojave last week and upgraded Alfred to the latest version right after that.  Today, my snippets suddenly stopped working.  I noticed that Alfred is not on the Automation section of the Security & Privacy settings, and I can't add it.  I tried dragging it from Finder and it just bounces back, and there's no option to add anything.  Please help!  I need my snippets for work.

[Vero]

@Rebecca Alfred needs to be added to the Accessibility preferences.

 

Take a look at the Snippets troubleshooting for more details:

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

 

Don't forget to click the padlock in the bottom left of the Security & Privacy preferences so that you can make changes.

 

Cheers,
Vero

 

 

[Rebecca]

Thank you for your help.  At one point, just for a few moments, Alfred said that something was preventing text expansion by locking secure entry.  I think it was MacOS or System or something like that, definitely not an application.

 

I have also noticed that now my Alfred hotkeys are not working either.  I restarted my computer but the issue is persisting.  What else can I do to try to fix this?

[TheJesusFish]

I'm having the same problem. At some point today, all snippets have stopped working for me, persisting through restart. Nothing has been updated recently, and I am on the most recent version of Mojave.

 

Edit: after some more testing, it seems like they suddenly work in some text fields, but not others. For instance, I have an snippet for my company's download page. It works fine in Chrome's address bar, but not in a text field in Help Scout (which is running inside of Chrome). It also doesn't work in Slack's text field (again, running inside of a Chrome tab).

Edited January 30, 2019 by TheJesusFish

[Rebecca]

You're right - I can get a snippet in Chrome's address bar, but not anywhere else in Chrome (like Gmail or Google Sheets).  I also just tried deleting and reinstalling Alfred, and that didn't work either.

[Andrew]

@TheJesusFish @Rebecca If you could update to the latest Alfred 3.8 b958 pre-release from Alfred's update preferences and let me know how you get on. In the latest version of Google Chrome, when Alfred used the Apple Accessibility API to get information about the currently active text field, Chrome was returning different / random process identifiers for each keystroke.

 

I've made a tweak which should work around this apparent Chrome bug.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[TheJesusFish]

13 minutes ago, Andrew said:

@TheJesusFish @Rebecca If you could update to the latest Alfred 3.8 b958 pre-release from Alfred's update preferences and let me know how you get on. In the latest version of Google Chrome, when Alfred used the Apple Accessibility API to get information about the currently active text field, Chrome was returning different / random process identifiers for each keystroke.

 

I've made a tweak which should work around this apparent Chrome bug.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

That seems to have fixed it! Great work as always, friends

[Rebecca]

Yes, this fixed it for me too!  Thank you!

[mspCCMA]

Hello, I'm having the same problem- in Catalina, Alfred 4 snippets don't work at all. I have both full disk and accessibility turned on.

 

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by mspCCMA

[mspCCMA]

On 1/30/2019 at 5:38 PM, Rebecca said:

Yes, this fixed it for me too!  Thank you!

 

Rebecca, how did you access an older version of Alfred in order to fix this?

[Vero]

@mspCCMA There's no need to revert to an older version, as snippets should work perfectly in Catalina.

 

If you've upgraded to Catalina, you may need to remove and re-add Alfred to the permissions, as some users experienced permissions corruption in the OS upgrade. 

 

Just remove Alfred from accessibility and full disk access, then re-add (via Alfred's General preferences tab, or manually), and you should be all sorted.

 

If the issue persists, please let me know and I'll help you further

 

Cheers,
Vero

[mspCCMA]

Hi Vero, thanks. I tried this but it still does not work. Next steps?

[Vero]

@mspCCMA  Could you please provide more details, so that I can help you further?

 

- Which version of Alfred and macOS are you using?
- Are snippets enabled in Alfred's preferences?
- Is the specific snippet enabled for expansion?
- When you try to expand a snippet, at what stage does it fail? E.g. Does the snippet disappear and partially pasted, or is nothing pasted at all? Do you hear an error beep?
- Does the issue occur in all apps or only some apps? Test in TextEdit, which is one of the simplest apps, as some more complex apps or browsers have their own clipboard management or behaviours that may cause issues
- Do you use any third-party clipboard managers or snippets tools that may be interfering?
 

The more details you provide, the quicker I can help you troubleshoot what's happening

 

Cheers,
Vero

[mspCCMA]

Hi Vero, 

 

In response: 

 

 - Which version of Alfred and macOS are you using? 4.0.7
- Are snippets enabled in Alfred's preferences? Yes, as far as I can see
- Is the specific snippet enabled for expansion? What do you mean by this?
- When you try to expand a snippet, at what stage does it fail? E.g. Does the snippet disappear and partially pasted, or is nothing pasted at all? Do you hear an error beep? No sounds are made and no snippet appears.
- Does the issue occur in all apps or only some apps? Test in TextEdit, which is one of the simplest apps, as some more complex apps or browsers have their own clipboard management or behaviours that may cause issues All apps.
- Do you use any third-party clipboard managers or snippets tools that may be interfering? No; I used to run TextExpander but have uninstalled it.

 

Thanks for your help!

 

 

[Andrew]

@mspCCMA Could you create a Diagnostics file from Alfred's Help preferences and email that to our info@ address so I can take a look to see if snippet expansion is correctly configured in Alfred on your Mac  

[strajk]

Since Googling "alfred snippets stopped working" leads here, I'll post here my 2 cents

 

If you are using Keyboard Maestro, try quitting it and check if it solves the Alfred snippets expansion problem.

If it does, then you "just" need to find which Macro breaks it and adjust it.

(For me, it was a macro hijacking cmd+v in specific app)

 

[mikedvzo]

I have been having this problem on and off for some time in Mac OS 10.15.  It is sometimes Terminal but now it is also the Login window and Webex Teams.  Any ideas.  

[Vero]

@mikedvzo Your issue is unlikely to be at all related to the first two users in this thread; The first one had accidentally set both a prefix and a suffix for his snippet collection, which he wasn't including in the keyword he was typing, so he adjusted these and was sorted.

 

The second stopped Cmd + V from pasting normally by allowing Keyboard Maestro to steal that hotkey combination, making it impossible for Alfred to paste to the frontmost app.

 

Please provide more details if you're having issues. 

 

- When you try to expand a snippet, at what stage does it fail? E.g. Does the snippet disappear and partially pasted, or is nothing pasted at all? Do you hear an error beep?
- Does the issue occur in all apps or only some apps? Test in TextEdit, which is one of the simplest apps, as some more complex apps or browsers have their own clipboard management or behaviours that may cause issues
- Do you use any third-party clipboard managers or snippets tools that may be interfering?

- When using WebEx, are you referring to pasting in a virtual or remote machine? 

 

The more information you can provide, the more likely we'll be able to help establish what's happening.

 

Cheers,
Vero

[Domscillator]

I have the same exact issue. 

I bought Alfred last week and the snippets stopped working all of a sudden today. (Catalina 10.15.5)

 

On the app it says that "Login window is preventing text expansion by locking secure entry"

 

I have all apps closed (even my browser).

 

Any ideas? I bought Alfred mainly for this function as a better alternative for TypeIt4Me (which I've completely uninstalled) as I rely on this function on my every day work.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Domscillator

[deanishe]

26 minutes ago, Domscillator said:

On the app it says that "Login window is preventing text expansion by locking secure entry"

 

If it's loginwindow, you need to log out and back in again, or possibly reboot to fix it.

 

When an application enables Secure Entry and doesn’t disable it again, this breaks all snippet expansion apps because it prevents them from watching what you’re typing. Sometimes you can fix it by restarting the application that did it, but often you just have to log out and back in or reboot.

[dentarg]

I've never experienced this problem before, but after I installed Alfred 4.1, Build 1167, Thursday 9th July 2020 yesterday, I now have it:

loginwindow seems to be preventing text expansion by locking secure entry

 

I'm using macOS Mojave. I haven't launched any new applications since installing the Alfred update, except Firefox that wanted to be updated. I tried quitting Firefox but it did not solve it. I haven't tried any workarounds yet (rebooting, logging out/in). Have a hard time understanding what suddenly made this a problem...

Edited July 15, 2020 by dentarg

[Andrew]

@dentarg when you see anything locking secure entry, this is unfortunately outside of Alfred's control and simply means macOS is no longer feeding accessibility events to any app, including Alfred. loginwindow is an interesting one as it can also mean an ancestor of this, such as the password coming back from screensaver. Either way, you may need to restart, or at least logout/in to try and flush that through if quitting all other apps doesn't help, and after this, you may never see it again.

[dentarg]

@Andrew I just updated Alfred from 4.0.9 [1144] to 4.1 [1167] on a different computer (MacBook, running macOS 10.14.6 (18G5033)). I tried a snippet before updating, it worked, it was pasted. After the update, the snippet is not pasted. I'm not seeing any message in the Alfred Preferences this time (e.g. "loginwindow seems to be preventing text expansion by locking secure entry"). I haven't yet rebooted this computer, closed any programs, or logged out. I will do so eventually, and report back if the problem persist. Just thought this observation was interesting. Feels something is happening when Alfred is updated to the new version. I haven't ever experienced it before.

[dentarg]

I've rebooted my computers since the Alfred update, and the pasting as has *not* started working again. I'm not seeing any message in the Alfred Preferences about it.

[Vero]

@dentarg Could you please go through the steps to reset permissions? Launch Alfred's preferences to the General tab > Request Permissions > Accessibility. In this System preferences panel, remove Alfred from the Accessibility permissions if he was already there, then add him again.

 

This is a more common issue on Catalina, but may happen on Mojave as well, where macOS loses resolution of which apps have permission to use accessibility (required for pasting snippets for you) and re-setting it is sufficient to grant the permission again.

 

If the issue persists, please provide more details about the behaviour you're seeing:

- When you type your snippet, does it disappear?

- Do you hear an error beep?

- What app/website are you pasting into? Does it work in TextEdit?

- What is your snippet keyword? Are you definitely typing the right one?

- Is the auto-expansion feature enabled? Is the box checked for the specific snippet you want to paste?

 

You'll also find more information about troubleshooting Snippets here:

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

 

Cheers,
Vero