Sometimes it takes twice for Alfred hotkey to work

[stormymondays]

I'm posting here to see if someone else has experienced this. I'm on a fairly old Mac, running High Sierra. I used to run Alfred v1 (with powerpack) and recently upgraded to 4.8 which is the highest this Mac can run.

 

Since the upgrade, sometimes it takes twice for Alfred hotkey to work. I always doubt myself thinking I must have pressed the keys too lightly but I checked and the keys work correctly (I'm using alt + Space as the hotkey).

 

Once I do the double hotkey press, Alfred works normally for a while.

 

Any idea how to troubleshoot this? Maybe I could downgrade?

[Stephen_C]

It sounds like you might have a hotkey conflict. If you change your hotkey combination to something more obscure and unlikely to be used by Spotlight or another app do you see normal showing/hiding behaviour?

 

One way you may be able to find out if there is a hotkey conflct is to quit Alfred then use the hotkey combination to see if it has an effect on any other app.

 

Stephen

[stormymondays]

   That's a good suggestion. There's no hotkey conflict that I can find. I've been using the same hotkey on all my computers ever since before Alfred existed. I've temporarily switched back to Alfred v1 to test.

[Stephen_C]

Just now, stormymondays said:

I've temporarily switched back to Alfred v1 to test.

I'd not be inclined to use that classic, original version. To obtain the full benefits of Alfred you should download (as I believe you did) the latest compatible version from https://www.alfredapp.com/help/v4/ (on the basis that you need to use Alfred 4). I merely flag the point because it's Alfred 4 that you really need to get working for you.

 

Stephen

[stormymondays]

I agree. But now, with the classic Alfred, I got the same problem! So it's either a hotkey conflict or an actual key malfunction. I'm going back to v4 and will test the hotkeys. Thanks!

[Stephen_C]

Although I've not used it I have seen a number of recommendations for the free ShortcutDetective app for use detecting hotkey conflicts.

 

Stephen

[stormymondays]

Many thanks. I used Shortcut Detective and after a while I was able to confirm the lack of responsiveness. I pressed the shortcut key and instead of detecting Alfred, it got stuck at "Detecting..."

 

So the keyboard works, the shortcut is not used by another app that I can find, but randomly it won't get detected by Alfred. No idea how to troubleshoot this further.

[Vero]

@stormymondays Could you share with us what hotkey combo you've been using/testing?

[stormymondays]

Alt + Space, been using it since 2011, and before Alfred, with Quicksilver. It was working correctly with Alfred v1 and Sierra (it's an old computer!) I recently upgraded to High Sierra and Alfred 4.

Edited May 23 by stormymondays

[Vero]

@stormymondays It's almost certain that this will be caused by a conflict between Alfred and another app / macOS feature, especially if the behaviour becomes normal when you use a different hotkey combo.

 

The best place to start is the macOS System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts and check for any clashes. If you can't find one there, quit all third-party apps that have helpers or menu bar items, then try again.

 

Alternatively, you could potentially have two versions of Alfred running concurrently. This shouldn't be possible but if you're using Alfred 1, it can happen. In that case, open Activity Monitor and check for anything called Alfred that is running in case there is more than one.