Alfred Search not working unless item found in Spotlight first

[hollistik]

I'm having an issue where Alfred is randomly unable to search for apps and files. If I search for that file or app on Spotlight though (and find it) and then try searching for it on Alfred, then Alfred can find it. It then stays 'searchable' for a while until it randomly stops showing up in Alfred and I have to search Spotlight again. Any idea what is going on? I've tried all the indexing troubleshooting steps. 

[deanishe]

Hi @hollistik, welcome to the forum.

 

You're only searching for the app/file in Spotlight or you're also opening it?

 

Alfred limits the number of results it shows fairly drastically (for performance reasons) and orders results by the most-recently opened. As a result, it's pretty common for things you'd expect to show up not to show up, and you have to open them to "bump" them back up into the results.

[Andrew]

Here is a page which explains Alfred's result ranking

 

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/kb/understanding-result-ordering/

 

If you're getting peculiar or unexpected results, take a look at the troubleshooting on this page too.

[hollistik]

On 8/29/2020 at 10:13 PM, deanishe said:

Hi @hollistik, welcome to the forum.

 

You're only searching for the app/file in Spotlight or you're also opening it?

 

Alfred limits the number of results it shows fairly drastically (for performance reasons) and orders results by the most-recently opened. As a result, it's pretty common for things you'd expect to show up not to show up, and you have to open them to "bump" them back up into the results.

Hi @deanish, @andrew, thanks for your replies. I am able to search AND open with Spotlight and after that the result will appear in Alfred. This seems to be only temporary though. I rebooted this morning for instance and Spotify would not appear again in Alfred when it was fine 2 days ago. It's not a problem with limiting results either as you can see from

the results in the screenshot below. There literally are no other results found. I've been using Alfred for years and it has been flawless. All this seems to have started since I moved to Catalina.

 

 

[Andrew]

@hollistik if you upgraded to Catalina, there could be some permissions issues lingering too. Alfred keeps a cache of apps where possible, so apps shouldn't disappear.

 

Alfred 4 now has a file search troubleshooting built in (help preferences) could you drag a file which Alfred can't find into it to see the output.

 

Also, could you try temporarily creating a new user account, switching to that user, and seeing the behaviour there?