Compatibility with config on external volumes

[twhb]

I keep my Alfred configuration on a separate encrypted APFS volume on my startup disk, with the key saved in my keychain. This results in the volume not getting mounted until sometime apparently late during my first login, after Alfred is launched, so Alfred can’t locate its config during launch and aborts with an error popup.

 

Currently I can work around this by clicking “Quit” in the popup then relaunching Alfred, as by that time the volume has mounted, but it would be nice to skip this and to not risk accidentally clicking the other button that messes up my config. I also doubt all users would figure out the workaround.

 

If it’s possible to detect what’s on an external volume and when login-time mounting is complete, then I’d like to request that Alfred wait until volumes have mounted before declaring config on them missing. If it’s not possible to detect that, then I’d like to request at least that Alfred react to a missing config error at launch by waiting a few seconds then retrying.

[Andrew]

@twhb As this is a somewhat complex corner case (Alfred can't know if the intended mount of a volume will ever exist, or indeed how long it may take for the volume to mount), it would be better to not have Alfred automatically launch at login and create your own script to delay the launch of Alfred.

[deanishe]

10 hours ago, twhb said:

I also doubt all users would figure out the workaround.

 

The best solution is to launch Alfred when the volume is mounted. Try the Launch Agent I posted here:

 

 

[twhb]

@Andrew @deanishe thank you for your replies. The provided launch config does work, thank you much for that.

 

As with the other thread's OP, I'd still like to put in a vote for better core support. I understand that Alfred can't do the right thing in all situations, but I think that it could in this one and several others. If Alfred were to wait for its config file to be available before loading and only abort if it doesn’t show up for some timeout, that should change nothing in the normal case, result only in a slower error popup in the truly broken case, and fix cases like encrypted external volumes and Google Drive for Desktop (previously File Stream).