file search

[Abhishek Jain]

Hi

 

I remember a string which is the part of a filename, but when I search in Alfred it does not show up. 

 

eg.  if file name is "2021-01-10-myfile-est"

 

if I search for "myfile" string the file does not show up in search. How can I fix this ?

 

 

[Vero]

@Abhishek Jain How are you searching for files?

 

Are you prefixing your search with the spacebar as I assume your general files aren't (and shouldn't be) in your default results?  I believe characters after a dash should be treated as a new word boundary by the macOS index (certainly seems to be in Big Sur)

 

Might be worth familiarising yourself with the spacebar shortcut:

https://www.alfredapp.com/blog/tips-and-tricks/spacebar-trick/

 

Next, if you're still looking for a word that isn't the start of a word boundary, you can prefix the characters with a wildcard star, e.g. "[spacebar]*file".

 

Cheers,
Vero

[Alan He]

About file search, I have a question, when i type file?

 

Why the first few results don't start with file, but they show. 

 

like typings-external-files.d.ts

 

[Vero]

@Alan He The word "file" starts at a word boundary, so it's a relevant result.

 

Beyond that, Alfred uses a bunch of other factors, such as your knowledge (files you've opened before), so if you open the "typings" file a few times, Alfred will learn you're keener to have that file come up in the results at the top for that search term  

 

Cheers,
Vero

[Alan He]

Understand, thank you.