Importing settings from Alfred 4 to 5

[Irret]

I tried to upgrade from Alfred 4 to 5 but the migration assistant didn't bring any settings or workflows over, despite recognizing my previous Alfred installation. I thought I had downloaded the tar.gz file to my desktop but now I cannot locate it, so maybe I deleted it or hit cancel by mistake.

 

I quit Alfred 5 and can relaunch Alfred 4 with all of my old settings so I do have access to my old data. Everything is also sync'd to another computer so I'm not worried about data loss.

 

I tried to uninstall Alfred 5 by dragging the application from ~/Applications into the trash and reinstalling to reinitialize the migration assistant but every time I reinstall, the migration assistant doesn't kick off. I even uninstalled and restarted my machine and tried again.

 

Is there another way to more fully uninstall Alfred 5 to get the migration assistant to try and migrate (or prompt me to download the tar.gz to import) again? Are there preference files for Alfred 5 I need to delete from somewhere to make that happen?

 

The migration help doc (https://www.alfredapp.com/help/getting-started/migration/) says I can manually sync between 4 and 5:

 

Quote

If the migration options are greyed out when going through the Getting Started steps, Alfred will give a "No previous versions of Alfred found, continue without migration" message.

If you're expecting to see preferences, continue without migration, then manually sync your preferences from Alfred's Advanced preferences.

 

But that sync lists a lot of preferences that aren't sync'd. I'd like to avoid manually migrating those if possible.

[Stephen_C]

3 hours ago, Irret said:

Everything is also sync'd to another computer so I'm not worried about data loss.

Whay sync method are you using? Is it, by any chance, Dropbox?

 

3 hours ago, Irret said:

But that sync lists a lot of preferences that aren't sync'd. I'd like to avoid manually migrating those if possible

It's actually very quick to make those settings so if I were you I'd not worry about that.

 

Stephen

[Vero]

@Irret There's no need to worry - just set your sync location for Alfred 5 to the location where your Alfred 4 preferences are stored. The local settings will also be used.

 

Just ensure that when you're ready to remove Alfred 4 from your Mac, you simply drag Alfred 4 from the Applications folder to Trash, rather than using any uninstaller/app cleaner apps, as the preferences will be needed by Alfred 5

 

Cheers,
Vero

[Irret]

 

17 hours ago, Stephen_C said:

Whay sync method are you using? Is it, by any chance, Dropbox?

 

I am syncing with Dropbox, but I'm syncing in an Dropbox/Alfred folder, not the Apps folder, so I'm hoping that I'm not impacted by the issue in this help doc, if that's what you were thinking. https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/dropbox-apps-folder/

But maybe there's another issue you're thinking of, in which case, I'm all ears to give something else a try if my sync might be messing things up!

 

12 hours ago, Vero said:

@Irret There's no need to worry - just set your sync location for Alfred 5 to the location where your Alfred 4 preferences are stored. The local settings will also be used.

 

Oh my goodness, is that all that I missed? 🤦‍♀️ I'll re-install and give that a try!

[Stephen_C]

5 hours ago, Irret said:

But maybe there's another issue you're thinking of,

Only that you'll need to ensure your Alfred sync folder is set to "Local" storage rather than "Online only": see this Alfred help page.

 

Stephen

[Irret]

Thank you for the link about local storage @Stephen_C! That directory is local right now and I've marked it as "make available offline" - seems that's the way to have Dropbox not every smart sync it to the cloud, I'll have to do more reading on that. Great tip!

 

Setting the sync directory under the "Advanced" panel in Alfred 5 got all my settings sync'd up exactly the way I needed them. 🎉 I'm not sure why I thought there would be a bunch of setting that I'd need to manually move around.

 

Appreciate both of y'all help here. Alfred 5 seems to be working great on both of my machines now; I'll give it a couple weeks to settle in before I delete Alfred 4 using the instructions @Vero shared in this comment when I'm ready to call the upgrade complete. ✅