System Settings — Open macOS System Settings Panes

[vitor]

Usage

Open System Settings panes via the workflow’s keywords: about, accessibility, airdrop (and handoff), appearance, appleid, battery, bluetooth, control centre, date (and time), desktop (and dock), displays, extensions, family, focus, general, game centre, game controllers, icloud, internet accounts, keyboard, language (and region), lock screen, login items, mouse, network, notifications, passwords, printers (and scanners), privacy (and security), profiles, screen saver, screen time, sharing, siri (and spotlight), software update, sound, startup disk, storage, time machine, touch id (and password), trackpad, transfer (and reset), users (and groups), vpn, wallet (and apple pay), wallpaper, wifi.

⤓ Install on the Alfred Gallery | Source

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by vitor

[vitor]

When reporting issues, please include your exact installed versions of:

• The Workflow.
• Alfred.
• macOS.
  

In addition to:

• The debugger output. Perform the failing action, click “Copy” on the top right and paste it here.
• Details on what you did, what happened, and what you expected to happen. A short video of the steps with the debugger open may help to find the problem faster.
  

Thank you. Accurate and thorough information is crucial for a proper diagnosis which allows me to help you better.

[vitor]

I’d like to acknowledge @Stephen_C, who checked several lists for for valid URL schemes¹, and his own workflow. If you prefer seeing all settings in a list, give that one a spin!

---

¹ If anyone finds more, please do share!

[andy4222]

@vitor Do you generate these workflows via a script? I really like how organized the objects are in the UI. Plus, curious if you created so many objects manually and changed their name and icon?

Edited November 2, 2022 by andy4222

[vitor]

Just now, andy4222 said:

Do you generate these workflows via a script?

 

Nope.

 

Just now, andy4222 said:

I really like how organized the objects are in the UI

 

Thank you. Glad to know someone appreciates it. I like having them look neat.

 

3 minutes ago, andy4222 said:

curious if you created so many objects manually and changed their name and icon?

 

Yep. And set them up equidistantly in alphabetical order. Plus there is one icon for which I couldn’t find an original, so I redrew it. Not revealing which one though! I’m more curious if someone can tell.

[LeifJP]

Hi,

just for my understanding, why I should use this workflow? I didn't test every keyword but all I test I just can access these preference pane without this workflow. As an example (the result direct result from Alfred is shown in german on a german OS, but it's the same):

 

 

 

What is the point I didn't got.

Thanks, Leif

[vitor]

Welcome @LeifJP,

 

The workflow has icons, more nested prefpanes, and corrects others Ventura broke. You don’t have to use the workflow if you’re not bothered by any of the Ventura changes and don’t need the extra niceties, it exists for those who care about any of that.

[Mingwei]

@vitor Where/how did you obtain the original icons? I'm so impressed. Tried looking inside system settings.app etc. and still have no idea how you extracted them. 

[vitor]

First, I opened System Settings and Activity Monitor. On the latter I double-clicked on the process for one of the panes, which opens a new window, and switched to the Open Files and Ports tab. I snooped around those paths and found /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions. They’re all .appex bundles and don’t contain the images, they’re auto-generated (which one can figure out by looking at the Info.plist inside). But you can still get them by doing a “Get Info” then clicking the icon in the window and ⌘C, followed by opening Preview and File → New from Clipboard. Or just drop the .appex wherever you can drop an image in Alfred, and it will be done without extra effort.

Not every icon is in there. To find the missing ones, I did a find / -iname '*SOME_KEYWORD*appex' 2> /dev/null in the terminal. It does a case-insensitive search of every file and folder on the system for a name containing SOME_KEYWORD (tweak for what you’re looking for) and ending in appex. I tweaked SOME_KEYWORD as necessary. The 2> /dev/null is so we ignore messages of things which cannot be searched.

• Battery: Did not find the icon. That’s the one I redrew.
• Siri & Spotlight: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Settings.framework/PlugIns/SiriPreferenceExtension.appex
• General: /System/Applications/System Settings.app/Contents/PlugIns/GeneralSettings.appex
• Password: /System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/App/System/Library/CoreServices/PasswordsSettingsExtension.appex

[Mingwei]

@vitor Thanks for the detailed explanation! Was going to say I'll keep these tricks in mind for future use - but then realised I'll most likely just end up stealing icons from the extensive collection in your workflow 😅

[vitor]

I haven’t used every icon in /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions (e.g. CDs & DVDs, Classroom stuff), so do keep it in mind if you need those. If you find the Battery icon or any other locations with more, I’m interested in keeping the record.

[LeifJP]

On 11/6/2022 at 12:45 PM, vitor said:

Welcome @LeifJP,

 

The workflow has icons, more nested prefpanes, and corrects others Ventura broke. You don’t have to use the workflow if you’re not bothered by any of the Ventura changes and don’t need the extra niceties, it exists for those who care about any of that.

Hi Vitor,

 

sorry if i offended you. But the question was serious meant. Maybe my English is not so good. But you answered my question, so I'm fine. Never the less maybe you should add that explanation to your workflow page in Alfred.app. 

So sorry again and thanx for your work,

Leif 

[Kalaschnik]

Is there a way to disable the default settings hits and only show the setting hits from the workflow?

[vitor]

5 hours ago, LeifJP said:

sorry if i offended you.

 

You haven’t, don’t worry about it! My answer was genuine. But you’re the only one so far with that question, while a bunch of people specifically asked for this when they faced the situation in Ventura, so adding a note does not seem necessary at this point.

 

5 minutes ago, Kalaschnik said:

Is there a way to disable the default settings hits and only show the setting hits from the workflow?

 

Alfred Preferences → Features → Default Results. Disable “Preferences” at the top.

[vitor]

Updated to 2022.3.

• Add icloud Keyword.
• Split “and” and “or” keywords into multiples. For example, both airdrop and handoff will open the AirDrop & Handoff panel.
  

[xilopaint]

@vitorDo you know why most of my .prefPane files don’t have their icon? Is there any way to fix this? I’ve installed your workflow because of this but I’d still like to fix the issue if possible. It’s annoying to see these general gear icons in Alfred’s results.

 

Edited March 28, 2023 by xilopaint

[vitor]

21 minutes ago, xilopaint said:

Do you know why most of my .prefPane files don’t have their icon?

It’s a Ventura thing. Icons are broken in general. I don’t know of anyone on Ventura whose preference panes icons did not disappear.

[xilopaint]

7 minutes ago, vitor said:

It’s a Ventura thing. Icons are broken in general. I don’t know of anyone on Ventura whose preference panes icons did not disappear.

 

Any chance the last answer in this thread works or might break something?

 

[Stephen_C]

6 minutes ago, xilopaint said:

Any chance the last answer in this thread works or might break something?

I do not seem to have on my macOS 13.3 either of those files. HoudahSpot finds nothing with those names.

 

Stephen

[vitor]

14 minutes ago, xilopaint said:

Any chance the last answer in this thread works or might break something?

It’s unlikely to work, but deleting user caches typically doesn’t break stuff irreparably (assuming you reboot, because you may have deleted something in use).

 

8 minutes ago, Stephen_C said:

I do not seem to have on my macOS 13.3 either of those files.

I’m not surprised, those instructions are for Lion. SIP wasn’t even a thing yet. Weird that they’d have caches for a system thing on the user’s machine, but it may be the instructions themselves which are wrong.

[andy4222]

Feature request: Add "Siri & Spotlight" preference pane

[vitor]

1 hour ago, andy4222 said:

Feature request: Add "Siri & Spotlight" preference pane

That’s already in there.

[andy4222]

My bad. I searched "Spotlight" rather than actual keyword "siri and spotlight". I miss fuzzy search  

 

Anyway, why do these ".prefPane" files show up when I search a System Setting? I put all of these files in Spotlight Privacy but they still show up. I did reload the cache and rebuilt spotlight index as well. Still doesn't work

 

 

[Stephen_C]

Alfred Preferences → Features → Default Results: uncheck Preferences under Essentials.

 

Stephen

[andy4222]

Beautiful. This works. Thanks @Stephen_C

 

Curious as to why .prefPane files were showing up despite of them being in the Spotlight Privacy? I assume Alfred is explicitly pulling these files and not depending on Spotlight indexing?