"Waiting for results from mac OS..."

[RobertF]

Does anyone else sees this error a lot when they activate Alfred using its keyboard shortcut?  I see it a lot when I activate Alfred and type "open <filename>" in order to open a file.

 

I have a one year old M1 mac Mini running macOS Big Sur that has 16 GB of RAM and Alfred 4.6.3.  This always happens if I have a lot of applications open.  If I look at iStat, I can see that I'm using a lot of memory even though hardly any of the eight cores are being used.  Is Alfred starved for RAM even though the CPU isn't in use?  My applications seem to run fine, I just have a problem using Alfred which is integral to my workflow  I'd like to understand what's happening before I go out and buy a more powerful Mac.

 

Thanks for your advice!

Edited February 25, 2022 by RobertF
Add Alfred version

[vitor]

4 hours ago, RobertF said:

Does anyone else sees this error a lot when they activate Alfred using its keyboard shortcut?  I see it a lot when I activate Alfred and type "open <filename>" in order to open a file.

 

First time that has ever come up, as far as I recall. Do you have a screenshot? What are your versions of Alfred and macOS?

 

4 hours ago, RobertF said:

I have a one year old M1 mac Mini running macOS Big Sur that has 16 GB of RAM.

 

Sounds like my setup. I’ve never seen Alfred take up a lot of RAM or CPU.

[deanishe]

16 hours ago, RobertF said:

I can see that I'm using a lot of memory even though hardly any of the eight cores are being used

 

"Memory used" is a largely meaningless statistic because macOS doesn't purge anything from RAM until it needs the space for something else. The RAM should nearly always be full (unless you have like 128GB or something).

 

Look at the "memory pressure" to see if you actually have too little RAM.

[RobertF]

Thanks Deanishe.  What is the upper range for an acceptable percentage level of memory pressure?

[Vero]

@RobertF If you're seeing the "Waiting for results from macOS..." message, I would recommend rebuilding your Mac's index. It could be that some corruption or incomplete index is causing macOS to lag in returning search results.

 

Take a look at step 5 here to rebuild your index:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/indexing/

[RobertF]

Vero, thank you!  I'll give this a try.