Autocomplete behavior question

[nathansu]

One of the things that made me race to purchase Alfred was that it's autocomplete behaved differently than a Spotlight search. I've just moved to a new (M1) Mac, and now Alfred does the thing I disliked about spotlight. I'm not sure how to explain without an example:

 

Let's say I'm trying to open the Calendar app. I invoke Alfred, then...

Type "c" yields top suggestion Show the Clipboard/Snippet Viewer

Add "a" top suggestion becomes Calendar

Add "l" top suggestion becomes Calculator

 

On my last Mac, typing the L in the example above would still keep the Calendar as the top suggestion. This was such a helpful change from Spotlight. If there were a support forum for my brain, I'd ask how to get it to stop typing after Calendar becomes the top suggestion - I can't seem to keep myself from continuing to type and getting a result other than the one I want. I see a value to the way it's working now, it's just not what's best for me. Is there a way to switch this behavior?

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[rknightuk]

I just tried this out and Alfred does learn what you want to open most often so for example I just did `cal` the opened calculator (by moving down to select it). Then next time I did `cal`, calculator was the top result instead of calendar.

 

It's likely your previous Mac install of Alfred had learnt that you want calculator rather than calendar.

[deanishe]

Hi @nathansu, welcome to the forum.

 

I think you misunderstand slightly how Alfred sorts suggestions: by default, it sorts them based on your previous choices. Your old Mac showed Calendar.app for cal because that’s what you’d trained Alfred to do.

 

It sounds like you didn't copy Alfred's "knowledge" over from your old machine, so it has forgotten everything it learnt about which item you want for which query. Also, by repeatedly selecting the same wrong result for cal, you’ve basically been training Alfred to do the opposite of what you want.

 

If you want to associate cal with Calendar.app, then just enter cal into Alfred and consistently action Calendar.app two or three times, then Alfred will remember. That's usually enough, though you might have to do it a couple more times to undo the association with Calculator.app that you've probably created.

Edited August 3, 2021 by deanishe

[nathansu]

Ah, okay - thanks both of you, that makes sense. I'll work on that training.

 

I used apple's migration assistant to move to the new machine. Does that omit Alfred's "knowledge"? Some of my changes are intact, like workflows, but I guess the autofill is separate?

 

Again, thanks! It's a relief to know I'll be able to get things going the way I prefer again.

[deanishe]

9 minutes ago, nathansu said:

I used apple's migration assistant to move to the new machine. Does that omit Alfred's "knowledge"?

 

I wouldn't have thought so. It's possible it skipped it, or that applications have different paths on the new machine, so Alfred isn't recognising them as the same items.

[nathansu]

That makes sense. Thanks again. I launched Calendar several times to train Alfred. Seemed to be showing up on top regularly even after the first time. All good now!