Contacts metadata not updating until Alfred is quit & re-launched [Fixed in 4.0.7 b1126 pre-release]

[luckman212]

• macOS Catalina 10.15.1 (19B88)
• Alfred 4.0.6 b1124

 

I just noticed that Alfred doesn't seem to ever update metadata (phone numbers, labels, etc) as I am updating them in Contacts.app.  The only way I can get Alfred to refresh is to completely quit & relaunch it. I tried both with and without the "Use Spotlight metadata for searching contacts" option — same results. I don't remember this being a problem before, but maybe I just never paid attention to it.

 

Edited November 20, 2019 by luckman212

[Vero]

@luckman212 Alfred doesn't cache any of this data, and operates directly with the Contacts API.

 

I've tried this on Mojave and there's no latency between changing a contact's details and the change being visible in Alfred. I'll take a look when I next use our Catalina testing Mac as well.

 

Have you tried restarting your Mac in case it's a Catalina issue that can be resolved with a reboot?

 

Cheers,
Vero

[luckman212]

Sure I can try a restart, but since a quit / relaunch of Alfred "solves" the issue (at least until the Contact metadata is updated again) it seems like (bug or not) something the Alfred could work around triggering whatever function is called during its startup.

[luckman212]

So, I noticed this was only happening on 1 of my Macs, not the other. I couldn't figure it out so I threw the sledgehammer at it:  blew out the Spotlight index and rebuilt it. I also trashed the contents of ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ and let that rebuild. After all that, Contact metadata are working normally again. Did not have to reboot (or even log out for that matter). Chalking this one up to (yet another) Catalina bug.

 

Sorry for the false alarm on Alfred! 🙃

 

Edited November 20, 2019 by luckman212

[luckman212]

Sorry to bring this up again, but I am not 100% sure this is just a Catalina bug anymore. The problem is back where Alfred has stopped updating the contact metadata even though I have edited the info in Spotlight. It definitely could be a Catalina bug but- is there any way you could look into it @Vero or @Andrew ? e.g. I just edited the phone# type for this contact, and Spotlight shows the correct value ("work")

 

yet Alfred still shows "home":

 

Quitting & re-launching Alfred gets it to immediately show the correct value. Hmm.

 

[Andrew]

@luckman212 There is one thing I could try, and that's switching to creating a new instance of the ABAddressBook instead of using the sharedAddressBook. I theorise that in Catalina, Apple may be [in a buggy way] caching the address book information for the shared instance outside of Alfred's control. Creating a new instance may have the same affect as restarting Alfred (at the expense of a little performance and memory).

[luckman212]

@Andrew Thanks, well that sounds interesting but if it's really a Catalina bug and you think performance will suffer due to that workaround, I could try filing a bug w/ Apple. Does it matter that I'm using a File Filter (keyword "c") to search Contacts in Alfred? (link) instead of having Contacts enabled for Default results?

 

[Andrew]

@luckman212 Alfred still access the Address Book API regardless of how you search for contacts.

 

I'm fiddling with this now, and there is a negligible affect for performance, but I don't have a currently suitable Catalina setup to see if this is fixed. I'm going to pop out a 4.0.7 pre-release in the next 10 mins, if you wouldn't mind testing and letting me know?

[luckman212]

@Andrew Sure thing - happy to test! (and thank you again)

[Andrew]

@luckman212 4.0.7 is now in Alfred's updater under pre-releases, let me know!

[luckman212]

@Andrew 4.0.7 fixed the problem! I don't really see any noticeable delay (but I am on a 6-core i7 Mac Mini 2018 so it's possible older machines might). I'm happy with this fix!

[Andrew]

Just now, luckman212 said:

6-core i7 Mac Mini 2018

 

Snap, that's the same spec Mac I use to develop Alfred