XanderPSON Posted February 12, 2019 Share Posted February 12, 2019 Hey Alfred community, I was having some issues with my Alfred search function (I forget what originally) so I followed the numerous guides and steps online here to rebuild my macOS metadata from the advanced tab, clear the cache, and to enter "reload" in the Alfred bar. I'm now encountering an issue where although Alfred can find all of my third-party apps, it cannot find any native Mac apps, like Notes, Settings, Photos, Dictionary, Terminal, etc. I can find all of these just fine in Spotlight. This is very peculiar and I can't find any reference of it in other help topics, so I'm posting this. I'm a software engineer by trade, so debugging software all day is my forte, yet I'm stumped on this. Has anyone run into this same issue and found a working solution? I downloaded the Alfred Metadata Tool and ran it on the Notes app, here are the result (I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be looking for): /Applications/Notes.app Internal File Metadata ====================== Display Name: Notes Alt Names: Notes.app File Type: com.apple.application-bundle Comments: Keywords: Last Used: 2019-02-12 20:58:54 +0000 Raw mdls File Metadata ====================== _kMDItemDisplayNameWithExtensions = "Notes.app" _kMDItemEngagementData = <09000000 002209c1 410002> _kMDItemRenderData = <09000000 002209c1 41002c> kMDItemAlternateNames = ( "Notes.app" ) kMDItemAppStoreCategory = "Productivity" kMDItemAppStoreCategoryType = "public.app-category.productivity" kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier = "com.apple.Notes" kMDItemContentCreationDate = 2018-08-21 03:40:38 +0000 kMDItemContentCreationDate_Ranking = 2018-08-21 00:00:00 +0000 kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2019-02-09 04:40:48 +0000 kMDItemContentType = "com.apple.application-bundle" kMDItemContentTypeTree = ( "com.apple.application-bundle", "com.apple.localizable-name-bundle", "com.apple.application-bundle", "public.directory", "public.executable", "com.apple.application", "public.item", "com.apple.package", "com.apple.bundle" ) kMDItemDateAdded = 2018-10-03 07:09:40 +0000 kMDItemDateAdded_Ranking = 2018-10-03 00:00:00 +0000 kMDItemDisplayName = "Notes" kMDItemExecutableArchitectures = ( "x86_64" ) kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2019-02-09 04:40:48 +0000 kMDItemFSCreationDate = 2018-08-21 03:40:38 +0000 kMDItemFSCreatorCode = "" kMDItemFSFinderFlags = 0 kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon = (null) kMDItemFSInvisible = 0 kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 1 kMDItemFSIsStationery = (null) kMDItemFSLabel = 0 kMDItemFSName = "Notes.app" kMDItemFSNodeCount = 1 kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID = 0 kMDItemFSOwnerUserID = 0 kMDItemFSSize = 14259295 kMDItemFSTypeCode = "" kMDItemInterestingDate_Ranking = 2019-02-12 00:00:00 +0000 kMDItemKind = "Application" kMDItemLanguages = ( de, he, "en_AU", ar, el, ja, en, uk, "es_419", "zh_CN", es, da, it, sk, "pt_PT", ms, sv, cs, ko, "yue_CN", Base, no, hu, "zh_HK", tr, pl, "zh_TW", "en_GB", vi, ru, "fr_CA", fr, fi, id, nl, th, pt, ro, hr, hi, ca ) kMDItemLastUsedDate = 2019-02-12 20:58:54 +0000 kMDItemLastUsedDate_Ranking = 2019-02-12 00:00:00 +0000 kMDItemLogicalSize = 14259295 kMDItemPhysicalSize = 7286784 kMDItemUseCount = 4 kMDItemUsedDates = ( "2019-02-12 08:00:00 +0000" ) kMDItemVersion = "4.6" Thanks! Link to comment
deanishe Posted February 13, 2019 Share Posted February 13, 2019 On 2/12/2019 at 10:36 PM, XanderPSON said: I'm now encountering an issue where although Alfred can find all of my third-party apps, it cannot find any native Mac apps, like Notes, Settings, Photos, Dictionary, Terminal, etc. When you say "native Mac apps", do you actually mean "first-party apps"? Or can you find all your Java apps, but none of your Cocoa apps? Link to comment
XanderPSON Posted February 14, 2019 Author Share Posted February 14, 2019 3 hours ago, deanishe said: When you say "native Mac apps", do you actually mean "first-party apps"? Or can you find all your Java apps, but none of your Cocoa apps? Correct, I meant the first-party apps. And actually, I may have just fixed it as I was preparing to respond in full. I opened up my Applications folder to scan for a list of first-party apps, and once I did, suddenly I was able to find Messages and Dictionary. Notes and Photos took a while longer to finally appear, but now they're there. I wonder if opening the Applications folder in Finder forced a reindex of the applications when it wasn't doing it normally otherwise? Either way, the issue seems to now have resolved itself. Thanks for responding and forcing me to investigate, which made it work! Link to comment
deanishe Posted February 15, 2019 Share Posted February 15, 2019 👍 Glad it's working. Link to comment
AndyG1 Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 I am having the same issue as described above. I have even cleared the cache and rebuilt the search and ALL 1st-party apps are NOT showing up in the Alfred search but are showing up in Spotlight. All 3rd-party apps show up just fine. How do I fix this, it's very annoying. Link to comment
Vero Posted December 7, 2019 Share Posted December 7, 2019 @AndyG1 Which version of Alfred and macOS are you using? Link to comment
bwbecker Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 I had the same issue. Upgrading to the most recent version of Alfred solved it. Note that in Catalina Apple has moved those first-party apps to a read-only partition of the file system. Finder knows where they are and continues to display them in the "expected" location (/Applications) even though they are really in /System/Applications. If you use Terminal or Forklift you have to look in /System/Applications to find them. Link to comment
deanishe Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 38 minutes ago, bwbecker said: Finder knows where they are and continues to display them in the "expected" location Finder lies quite a lot about where files are/what their names are. If an app can't seem to find a file where Finder says it is, chances are good that there's nothing wrong with the app, but rather that Finder is lying. Link to comment
AndyG1 Posted December 11, 2019 Share Posted December 11, 2019 On 12/7/2019 at 1:54 AM, Vero said: @AndyG1 Which version of Alfred and macOS are you using? I just upgraded to 4.0.6 [1124] from 4.0.5 and the issue has been resolved. Ugh! Thanks for the reminder. I should always be running the latest version before posting concerns. That would be the proper thing to do. Thank you! Link to comment
jroubieu Posted March 22, 2020 Share Posted March 22, 2020 (edited) If anyone has the same issue with Alfred 2.9 on Catalina, I solved this by adding /System/Application to the search scope. To do this from Alfred preferences, go to "Features > Default Results > Search Scope". Click the "+" button, then press Cmd-Shift-G and type "/System". This will display the System folder in the finder dialog. Select the "Application" subdirectory and confirm. Edited March 22, 2020 by jroubieu macbikegeek 1 Link to comment
macbikegeek Posted April 4, 2020 Share Posted April 4, 2020 On 3/22/2020 at 11:17 AM, jroubieu said: If anyone has the same issue with Alfred 2.9 on Catalina, I solved this by adding /System/Application to the search scope. To do this from Alfred preferences, go to "Features > Default Results > Search Scope". Click the "+" button, then press Cmd-Shift-G and type "/System". This will display the System folder in the finder dialog. Select the "Application" subdirectory and confirm. I had the same problem with first party apps (Numbers). This worked for me on Catalina with Alfred 4.0.9 bit but only after Clearing Application Cache and Rebuilding macOS Metadata. All good now. Thanks for the tip! Link to comment
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