Upgrade macOS catalina and Alfred 4, Alfred couldn't switch the window to emacs

[evan]

Upgrade macOS catalina and Alfred 4, Alfred couldn't switch the window to emacs

[vitor]

Welcome @evan,

 

That’s not enough information for us to debug the issue. Per your description, this seems to be related solely to macOS and not Alfred. What do you mean when you say you “couldn't switch the window to emacs”? What exactly was your setup and what were your steps?

[marcosdeseul]

The same thing happens to me.

 

I have a workflow to open Emacs, it previously working well. But after upgrading to Catalina, it can open the app initially, but I cannot go back to the app while using other apps.

[patbl]

I have the same problem. I have a workflow that used to launch Emacs if it wasn't open, and switch focus to it if it was open:

 

 

This worked on Mojave. On Catalina, the shortcut launches the app if Emacs isn't yet running. But if Emacs is running, the shortcut doesn't do anything.

Edited December 8, 2019 by patbl

[Andrew]

Could you please test what happens if you try launching Emacs from Finder by double clicking the app? I suspect you won't get focus in this situation either (i.e. a little Emacs / Catalina bug).

 

If so, perhaps instead of a Launch Apps / Files, you could use a Run AppleScript in Alfred with something like:

 

tell applications "Emacs" to activate

 

[Toontje]

I have the same problem with MacVim. MacVim is installed using homebrew but there is no icon/.app in Applications. Therefor you cannot drag MacVim into the Launch Apps object. When adding it manually Alfred tries to launch a new instance of MacVim.

[patbl]

6 hours ago, Andrew said:

Could you please test what happens if you try launching Emacs from Finder by double clicking the app? I suspect you won't get focus in this situation either (i.e. a little Emacs / Catalina bug).

 

In fact, that works as expected. Clicking it the first time launches Emacs, and clicking it subsequent times switches focus to Emacs.

 

6 hours ago, Andrew said:

If so, perhaps instead of a Launch Apps / Files, you could use a Run AppleScript in Alfred with something like:

 

tell applications "Emacs" to activate

 

 

Thanks, that works! That's good enough for me.

[deanishe]

4 hours ago, Toontje said:

MacVim is installed using homebrew but there is no icon/.app in Applications. Therefor you cannot drag MacVim into the Launch Apps object.

 

There's still a MacVim.app bundle somewhere. On my machine, it's in /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/…. And if Alfred or Spotlight can find it, you can also drag it from their results lists.

[patbl]

I've noticed that

tell applications "Emacs" to activate

is a bit laggy compared to the normal "Launch Apps / Files" action. Sometimes it takes a couple of seconds to change focus.

[Andrew]

16 hours ago, patbl said:

In fact, that works as expected. Clicking it the first time launches Emacs, and clicking it subsequent times switches focus to Emacs.

 

Is that in Finder (i.e. Finder window in /Applications/, or the Dock?)

[patbl]

19 hours ago, Andrew said:

 

Is that in Finder (i.e. Finder window in /Applications/, or the Dock?)

That's in the Dock.

[MadHun]

Was still was suffering from the inability to find/raise emacs from Alfred and found this solution:

% cd /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS
% mv Emacs Emacs-launcher
% mv Emacs-x86_64-10_14 Emacs
% cd /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/
% rm -rf _CodeSignature

This worked on my install from https://emacsformacosx.com/ and according to the blog post, should also work emacs installed from brew.

 

Thanks Chris Farber!  -->  https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/12/12/fixing-emacs-macos-catalina/

[eegorebulbous]

Thanks much MadHun -- that worked for me, and solved another problem with Emacs I hadn't realized yet -- permissions to read ~/Documents & ~/Downloads, e.g.

[Newareaton]

With emacs-plus and emacs-mac problem still exists, added every path I could into Alfred's scope, no results. Catalina 10.15.5.

 

They only workaround that work for me is to create workflow with name "Emacs" that launches Emacs app.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Newareaton

[deanishe]

4 hours ago, Newareaton said:

With emacs-plus and emacs-mac problem still exists

 

Did you try following the instructions @MadHun posted above?

[patbl]

13 hours ago, deanishe said:

 

Did you try following the instructions @MadHun posted above?

 

Those instructions used to work for me. But when I followed them with Emacs 27.1, Emacs refused to start. Chris Farber, the author the blog post referred to earlier, posted a workaround in a comment.