Help with Alfred Music Mini Player

[pcarlsen]

1. Alfred Mini Player deletes tracks in one of my playlists in Apple Music

 

I have started using Alfred Mini Player. And immediately realized that 99% of the tracks in my favorite playlist in Apple Music have disappeared. It is of course very worrying that Alfred Mini Player can have such a destructive influence on a playlist in the Music app on the Mac.

 

And the change to the playlist naturally takes effect on my iPhone, where the tracks are also gone.

 

In practice, this means that it is impossible to trust the integration between Alfred and Music on my Mac.

 

 

2. Alfred Miniplayer / Alfred / Music App becomes unresponsive

 

1. Here's what happens
2. Activate Alfred's Mini Player (AMP) via keyboard shortcut
3. AMP window will appear
4. I enter search criteria and press Enter to start playback
5. Playback starts
6. I activate AMP again and enter new search criteria
7. Nothing happens and AMP window hangs
8. Alfred can no longer be activated
9. The Music app cannot be selected in the Dock
10. If I check Activity Monitor, Music is marked with "No response"
11. Have to force quit Alfred and Music in Activity Monitor to move on

 

In practice, this means that AMP is effectively useless.

 

 

Hope

 

• I'm a super fan of Alfred and can't live without Alfred at all ❤️💪🏻
• Therefore, it hurts extra that there are these two issues 🥹
• Hoping for a quick response from the team behind Alfred 🙏🏻

 

 

Configuration

• MacBook Air (M1, 2020) 8GB
• macOS Monterey 12.4
• Alfred 5.0.1 (2067)

 

[Andrew]

2 hours ago, pcarlsen said:

Alfred Mini Player deletes tracks in one of my playlists in Apple Music

 

What is the name of this playlist? The only "write" action Alfred does is to the playlist name defined in Alfred Preferences > Features > Music > Advanced > Predictability. He doesn't have the underlying code to do any further modifying of playlists than this.

 

2 hours ago, pcarlsen said:

Alfred Miniplayer / Alfred / Music App becomes unresponsive

 

While unresponsive, could you please open up the macOS Activity Monitor, select Alfred, and then View > Run Spindump. If you could email this to our info@ address, I can take a look what could be holding up Alfred. In most cases, this will be the Music App not causing the hang by not replying to an AppleScript message when the "normal" and expected response would be instant.

 

Thanks,

Andrew

[pcarlsen]

The playlist was named "One".

 

And I'll perform the Spindump.

 

Thanks 🙏🏻

[pcarlsen]

Okay, still deeply concerning.

 

The playlist (now named "List 1" had one piece of music.

 

1. I add 5-6 tracks.
2. Checking that there are now 6-7 tracks in the playlist
3. Enables AMP and selects track to start
4. Enables AMP and picks another track
5. Music stops
6. And all but one track have now been deleted

I Alfred settings > Features > Music > Advanced the value in "Predictability" is "Liste 1" - the correct name for the playlist.

[pcarlsen]

And a little more to the mystery...

 

After the latest deletion of tracks, I tested AMP against another playlist.

1. st AMP > asking for 1st song
2. Playback begins
3. Checks playlist "Listet 1" in Music app – there are now two tracks that I have never placed in any playlist (see screenshot "before.jpeg")
4. AMP > asking for 3rd song
5. The desired song plays
6. Now the 1st and 2nd songs are deleted (see screenshot "after".jpeg")
7. Only one "surviving" song - the one that I asked to be played in step 4

[pcarlsen]

The horror continues…

1. I delete the original playlist "Liste 1"
2. I change the name of playlist "Two" to "PC Favorites"
3. You can see a screenshot of the playlist's 102 tracks ("before.jpeg")
4. AMP and asks for track in "PC Favorites" playlist
5. I can see the Music app 
6. Something is triggering a switch away from "PC Favorites" to another playlist
7. When I go back to "PC Favorites", 101 tracks have been deleted - only the track I requested still exists

I simply do not dare to use Alfred anymore

Edited July 30, 2022 by pcarlsen

[pcarlsen]

1. I rename playlist "Liste 1" to "Alfred Kill Zone" (short AKZ)
2. Inserts 12 tracks into this playlist
3. Makes a copy of playlist - name it "Please Don't Die" (short PDD)
4. AMP - searching for "Surburbia"
5. Playback starts
6. All tracks in AKZ are gone except "Surburbia"
7. All tracks in PDD are intact
8. APM - searching for "Hang With ME" (which is in PDD after all)
9. Playback starts
10. Now it is "Hang With Me" which is in AKZ
11. APM - searching for "Spleen Utd"
12. Playback starts
13. Now it is "Spleen Utd" who are in AKZ

It seems as if Alfred/AMP vipes the playlist listed in Alfred's settings for all songs - and then copies the current song into AKZ

[Andrew]

@pcarlsen The playlist name defined in Alfred's Preferences > Features > Music > Advanced is used by Alfred to set the play order. It's essentially a temporary and transient playlist so that he can maintain order, he will add, remove and clear songs from this playlist to match what you're seeing in the mini player (which is why you'll see songs you haven't played in this playlist). Any edits to this playlist in the Music app will be overwritten by Alfred.

 

Can I please check - Are you setting the name of this playlist in Alfred's settings to your existing playlists, e.g. "PC Favourites"?

 

To clarify, the name of this playlist should be set to something like Alfred Playlist so that you can recognise that it's not one of your own playlists.

[pcarlsen]

I have now created a playlist named Alfred Playlist. And entered the same name in the Alfred Settings.

 

Testing the setup:

1. AMP > searching for music in the playlist PC Favorites (102 tracks)
2. Pressing Enter and music starts playing
3. I can see that the desired track is now only member in Alfred Playlist.
4. PC Favorites still contains 102 tracks
5. AMP > searching "Behind the Wheel" (see screenshot "AMP")
6. Select a track and start playing
7. The Alfred Playlist now contains three tracks (see screenshot "Alfred Playlist")

 

So it would appear that your suggested solution with a playlist named Alfred Playlist (and the same name i Alfred Settings) ends the destructive behavior by Alfred and I can have my own playlists safe. Well, actuallly the destructive behavior persist but I go around "the land mine" before it blows up my playlist.

 

I think it is fair to write, that I have establised proof of a destructive behavior by design. If there was a warning icon and according text telling me that I should create a Alfred Playlist and under no circumstances enter the name of an existing playlist – I would have saved a lot of time and frustration.

 

Agree?

[Andrew]

1 hour ago, pcarlsen said:

I think it is fair to write, that I have establised proof of a destructive behavior by design. If there was a warning icon and according text telling me that I should create a Alfred Playlist and under no circumstances enter the name of an existing playlist – I would have saved a lot of time and frustration.

 

 

To clarify, if you had left Alfred's advanced playlist setting as the default setting, then everything would have operated by design. Alfred would have created and maintained his own playlist in Music called Alfred Playlist (the default name), and never touched your other playlists.

 

There is no unintended destructive behaviour here. By entering in a name of one of your own playlists, you were instructing Alfred to use that as his transient playlist while using the Mini Player.

 

I will update the help text under this setting to clarify what this setting's purpose is.

 

Thanks,

Andrew