Alfred Remote iPhone Error - No Pages Found

[mikedvzo]

I recently added a new Mac mini to Alfred, so I have a MacBook Pro and a new Mac mini. I used to have an old Mac mini, which I removed, so I always had two devices synced via iCloud Drive, with Optimization turned off and no issues.  Since I added the new Mac-Mini, I constantly get an error message when trying to connect with my iPhone via Alfred remote to the MacBook Pro, stating "No Pages Found." The fix is to restart Alfred's remote services on the MacBook Pro each time. I have removed and re-added the remote and rebooted it, and the problem persists.

[mikedvzo]

[mikedvzo]

This is the message I am getting every time it stops working.  Seems to be after about a few hours. Is there any logs or debugging I can turn on?  This worked flawlessly for years with two macs sharing preferences.  

[Vero]

@mikedvzo Could you please temporarily switch your sync location to a spot on your Mac outside of iCloud Drive, and then see what behaviour you're seeing when you're not using iCloud syncing?

 

Based on the behaviour you're seeing, it's the first variable to investigate as it's most likely the culprit in this issue.

[mikedvzo]

I set it to the default local directory and immediately started working after it failed.  I will wait a few hours because it never takes long to die. If this is the culprit, which I expect, you are correct that it is. What are the next steps if I want to keep syncing?  

 

 

Edited October 20, 2022 by mikedvzo

[mikedvzo]

I went ahead and stopped Alfred on the Mac mini and moved the sync file off of iCloud. I then told Alfred on the MacBook Pro to sync to iCloud. After everything was synced, I restarted Alfred on the Mac mini. I had it still pointing to the iCloud directory but now using the preferences file upload to iCloud by the MacBook. Everything seems good until late tonight and it failed again.  Moving back to a local folder. Seems like after it pushes changes from the Mac mini it breaks.  

Edited October 21, 2022 by mikedvzo

[mikedvzo]

So I moved it all to local sync and then back to remote, and it worked for almost a week and broke again. Any other suggestions on how to keep using remote sync on both machines w/o restarting the Remote services regularly on the MacBook?

 

Thinking through this more carefully, I have never used Alfred Remote with two machines almost simultaneously, and I wonder if this is a bug or limitation.  It broke again when I went back and forth between controlling both devices this morning.  

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by mikedvzo
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[mikedvzo]

Now it is doing it on the Mac mini. I suspect this is a bug in how Alfred handles the remote pages because I see no other issues with Syncing.  

[Vero]

@mikedvzo It's tricky to parse what you've done based on these messages so could you please set your Alfred preferences to be stored in a your home directory, in a locally stored folder (not Documents or Desktop, which most users sync via iCloud) and leave it as unsynced.

 

From my understanding of your replies, you are immediately re-setting a synced remote location. The objective here is to establish whether you see normal behaviour when the preferences remain unsynced.

 

Please keep it that way for at least a few days, and see what behaviour you get. This will help focus the issue on whether your issue is specifically caused by syncing or not.

[mikedvzo]

I went ahead and ran the Alfred for two days with both machines synced, and it failed as expected on the MacBook Pro after two days. As mentioned, it appears to happen when you are accessing both devices from the remote around the same time. I turned off sync on the MacBook Pro, which has not happened in a week.  There appears to be nothing wrong with the preferences file, just that it does not like simultaneous access to the file from 2 machines. Whenever I used it with two devices in the past, it was not at the same time, usually at least 15 min between accesses.  

[mikedvzo]

Update - I have a new M1 MacBook Pro and still have the same problem with the new Mac Mini and MacBook Pro. There are no issues if I do not use the remote with both machines.  This seems like a bug with the Remote app accessing multiple machines.  I am forced to not Sync on the one device. The only thing I use the remote for on my corporate MacBook is for a script I wrote to unlock my machines. I will. I had another way to do it. I would ditch using the remote on the corporate device.  

[Andrew]

How are you syncing your Macs? Did you carbon copy one of the other Macs? My guess is there is an Alfred server id conflict.

 

Can you check the content of the following file on each one of your Macs:

~/Library/Application Support/Alfred/Remote/ServerUID

 

If you restored one Mac from another, and now you have conflicting Server UIDs, this may cause the issue.

 

If this is the case, delete all connections in Alfred's prefs and in Alfred Remote, then quit Alfred and delete the ServerUID file from each Mac. Alfred will recreate this per Mac when you restart, making it unique to each Mac. Note reconnect Remote to each Mac.

[mikedvzo]

I sync them through iCloud Drive, turn off optimized storage, and wait for the first to settle before syncing the second. The new Mac mini and the MacBook Pro were built from scratch. After syncing, I noticed a couple of Workflow only on the primary machine.  Not sure why.  I have been at this for two months, and now I have a new MacBook built from scratch with the same issue. I checked the ServerUID files, and they are unique. By the way, I can run both Macs with the Remote app and connect. It takes a little while for one of them to fail.  

Edited December 17, 2022 by mikedvzo

[Andrew]

@mikedvzo As you're seeing other oddities, I suggest you disable syncing for a few weeks on all your Macs to confirm stability throughout. This will point the finger at the underlying syncing rather than at Remote or a specific Alfred feature.

 

Let me know how things are in a few weeks with syncing disabled.

[mikedvzo]

@Andrew I did that on November 7 with the old MacBook and the Mac mini and had no issues. I only recently got the new MacBook on Friday, so I re-enabled it, thinking it would be fine.  I manually Synced both preference files by turning off sync and copied the file over. I turned off the Remote and deleted both Macs, and quit Alfred. I restarted Alfred and added both Macs back, and I will see what happens. Right now, they both are working with no issues. Last time however it took almost an entire day to fail. 

 

Btw without Sync I never have an issue with the Remote on both machines and the ServerUID is stored in a location that is not synced so I would not expect that to be the issue.  

Edited December 18, 2022 by mikedvzo

[mikedvzo]

@Andrew I ran both machines again for another five days and had no glitches with the Mac mini preferences in iCloud and the MacBook preferences locally. I switched the MacBook to sync to iCloud and ran several remote sessions from my iPhone to both machines with no issues. I changed the workflow on the MacBook, and sure enough, the remote connection to the Mac mini failed, and the MacBook worked fine. This confirms my previous testing, and I believe the error is related to the sync after a change on one device. The status is inconsistent when I turn on sync and go into the workflows. Some workflows show up to date on one machine and not on the other, even though I am synced. I think I am done messing with this and will sync manually.  The fix is to disable the remote feature on the broken machine and re-enable it.  

Edited December 22, 2022 by mikedvzo