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Feature Request: Weighted Results & Fuzzy Searches


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I'm a happy paid user of Alfred but lately I've feeling lots of friction and really missing 2 missing features I relied upon extensively when I was a Quicksilver user and have been really trying to make it work in Alfred are Weighted Results & Fuzzy Searches.

 

Weighted Results:  I made extensive use of the feature that allowed you to "train" the searches to float more common results to the top on subsequent searches.  For example, if I typed the name of a folder like "Receipts", I might get 20 results of folders, but the one I wanted was 15th on the list.  If I clicked on it, the next time I searched, it would be the 3rd, and if I clicked on it again, it would be the 1st result when I typed the same search term.    This allowed Quicksilver to adjust itself to my needs for specific search terms and get to know what I wanted, which in turn made my work much easier/faster.

 

Fuzzy Searches: (note: this is only in regard to the file/folder Alfred already does a method of fuzzy searching on the initial query, but once it switches to the file tree mode, it only searches based on the letters at the beginning on the folder names.  For example, if I typed "Bills" and ended up in ~/Dropbox/Bills and now I see a folder called "ATT-Wireless", I cannot type "wire" to filter to just folder, I would have to type "ATT"

 

 

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32 minutes ago, Binarynomad said:

feature that allowed you to "train" the searches

 

Alfred already learns from your searches. It works best with a single query-to-item association, though. If you try to get Alfred to associate multiple items with the same query, you won't get stable behaviour.

 

35 minutes ago, Binarynomad said:

Fuzzy Searches: (note: this is only in regard to the file/folder

 

That's not possible, I'm afraid, because Alfred uses the macOS metadata search APIs and they don't support fuzzy search.

 

Alfred only uses fuzzy search for apps and preference panes. Everything else is word-starts-with. (A lot of workflows do support fuzzy search, however).

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35 minutes ago, Binarynomad said:

How do you find out or clear your associations if this becomes a problem?

 

You don't. Just keep using Alfred and it will learn new associations. You only have to action an item a couple of times for Alfred to associate it with the query.

 

The main point is that precisely this behaviour means you can't get Alfred to associate the same query with two different items and have them reliably appear in the same order.

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