Preference Syncing Issue

[UA Mike]

I am having issues syncing my preferences to my 2nd mac. The preferences file is in my Google Drive (which is mirrored for offline use). When I point Alfred to the correct folder, it restarts as per the procedure, but then I get the message that the preferences package is missing. When I click continue, my preferences are not loaded, but Alfred still knows where the location of the file ought to be.

Both macs are using the same version of Alfred (5.1.2). The 1st mac is running the pre-release version of Sonoma and the 2nd mac is quite a bit older running Ventura, if that makes a difference.

[Vero]

@UA Mike Thanks for giving some details on the issue you're seeing. 

Taking a look at your first screenshot, am I correct to assume that your "2TB New NVME" drive is an external drive? If so, that's not an appropriate location for your preferences. External drives take time to connect and mount at startup so will not be available quickly enough at startup.

 

Set the preferences to a location that is available at startup, not thereafter, and see whether the error goes away.

 

Let me know how you get on

[UA Mike]

@Vero The 2TB New NVME is my startup disk and is not an external drive. What other troubleshooting steps can your recommend?

[Vero]

@UA Mike On your second Mac, could you please follow these steps:

 

- Copy the Alfred.alfred preferences from your sync location to a folder you name Alfred in your home directory (/Users/michael/Alfred/)

- Go to Alfred's Advanced preferences and set the above as your sync location

- Restart your Mac and see if everything launches as expected

 

Are the contents of your preferences complete? Did you get any error message on startup?

 

This will help establish if the preferences are at fault, or the Google Drive location.

 

If it's the GD location, it's possible that your prefs folder isn't really set to be available offline: You may want to try setting the folder in which you store your preferences to be online then offline again, just in case Google Drive isn't respecting your settings.

[UA Mike]

@Vero I completed the above steps, but still get the Alfred startup error pictured

[Vero]

@UA Mike This means that the issue is outside of Google Drive.

 

If you don't restart your Mac, and simply quit and relaunch Alfred, do you get any preferences startup error? I assume that you won't, as the location of your preferences is already accessible.

 

Next, could you please follow these instructions to reset the sync location to defaults?

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/advanced/sync/disable-sync/

 

This will cause Alfred to use the default preferences in ~/Library/Application Support/Alfred/ which may still not tell us much if this is also stored on your 2TB New NVME drive.  Is this drive your Mac's internal one? Plugged by USB-C or otherwise?

[UA Mike]

8 minutes ago, Vero said:

If you don't restart your Mac, and simply quit and relaunch Alfred, do you get any preferences startup error? I assume that you won't, as the location of your preferences is already accessible

I actually get the same error.

 

9 minutes ago, Vero said:

Next, could you please follow these instructions to reset the sync location to defaults?

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/advanced/sync/disable-sync/

Completed this, but now I see several errors like this on the top of Alfred Preferences:

[Vero]

@UA Mike Could you please provide an answer to this question?

 

31 minutes ago, Vero said:

Is this drive your Mac's internal one? Plugged by USB-C or otherwise?

 

[vitor]

The red message makes me think maybe somewhere along the way the permissions in your preferences got set wrong. Probably some syncing error outside your control.

Select your preferences and do ⌘i (or right-click → Get Info). At the bottom you’ll see a Sharing & Permissions area. Expand it. Could you share a screenshot of that section?

[UA Mike]

@Vero It's an internal drive - the machine is a hackintosh in case you were wondering. I started to wonder whether that fact had anything to do with what I was experiencing, so I tried using another Macbook and was encountering the exact same issue. So then I started to think it had something to do with 'Mac 1' or Google Drive. I decided to start syncing with Dropbox instead and the problem was fixed instantly! Both Google Drive and Dropbox are set to mirror rather and on-demand syncing, so I can't really explain it.
 

@vitor Attached the screenshot for the file in Google Drive and also included the same info for the working version that is in Dropbox. I played around with the permission settings, but that didn't fix my issue. A couple of weird differences between the two files is that they're showing different "open with" apps and also the file sizes are different.

 

I'm puzzled as to why I have issues with GD but not Dropbox. I use GD to sync a bunch of other app preferences, such as Keyboard Maestro and haven't experienced the same thing. Any explanation you might have at this point would only be to satisfy my own curiosity 😃 

[vitor]

There’s something funky with that version which is set to open with TextEdit. There’s a good chance that deleting that one and replacing it with the good one from Dropbox will fix it. If it breaks again, it would mean Google Drive (or something in your system) would be altering the preferences bundle in some weird way. But I don’t recall every seeing that happen and tons of people sync with Google Drive.

[ojoavizor]

Hi. Did you finally manage to sort out the issue? I'm going through the same issue with Gdrive.

Thank you

[ojoavizor]

Just to provide some additional information on the issue. I'm experiencing the problem with an intel iMac 2017 (Ventura 13.6.3). I use Google Drive 85.0.30.0, and I have made sure that the folder where the Alfredpreferences file is stored has offline access granted. I use Alfred 5.1.4. However, the message that I get is this:

 

When I try to change the sync to Dropbox, the issue is the same.

 

Furthermore, if then I try to make any change in the configuration of the preferences, I get another error:

Thank you for your support

[UA Mike]

14 hours ago, ojoavizor said:

Just to provide some additional information on the issue. I'm experiencing the problem with an intel iMac 2017 (Ventura 13.6.3). I use Google Drive 85.0.30.0, and I have made sure that the folder where the Alfredpreferences file is stored has offline access granted. I use Alfred 5.1.4. However, the message that I get is this:

 

When I try to change the sync to Dropbox, the issue is the same.

 

Furthermore, if then I try to make any change in the configuration of the preferences, I get another error:

Thank you for your support

I don't have a solution for this other than I switched from using Google Drive to using Dropbox and had no issues

[ojoavizor]

Thank you for your contribution, but in my case it doesn't seem to be a solution:

[Vero]

@ojoavizor In both of these cases, the issue is with the sync service, so as a first step, let's exclude sync services from the troubleshooting temporarily.

 

• Please open Alfred's prefs to the Advanced preferences.
• Create a new folder and set your sync location to be ~/Alfred/ (that is to say, a folder called "Alfred" in your user directory, and not within a subfolder of it)
• With this new location, try changing and saving preferences.

Do you see any error messages or are preferences saving as expected? 

[ojoavizor]

@Vero I did as you advised, but still getting the same error:

 

Thank you

[Vero]

@ojoavizor Are you using any third-party tools that manipulate files on your Mac? When you manually navigate to ~/Alfred/ can you see your Alfred.alfredpreferences package?

 

I don't recall seeing this error for a local folder before, which leads me to believe there's something incorrectly configured on your Mac at a lower level (which can happen if you've migrated your whole Mac from a previous backup or via Migration Assistant.

 

To get a sense if how broad this issue is, could you please temporarily create a new user account on your Mac, activate your Powerpack and set a sync location? Do you get any errors on that profile? If you do not, it indicates that the corruption is specific to your primary user account.

[ojoavizor]

@Vero

I uninstalled a few apps that could manipulate files, but it didn't help. Regarding your other question, when I navigate to ~/Alfred/, I can actually see the Alfred preferences package, but the Alfred app doesn't allow me to set it as a sync folder.

After checking all of that, I created a new user and installed Alfred 5 again. I then created a new folder ~/Alfred/ and set it as the sync location. Now, it seems to work. Afterwards, I copied the updated Alfred.alfredpreferences package (the one I'm using with Gdrive) to ~/Alfred/, and it worked as well. But when I install Gdrive and try to set the sync location, I'm prompted again with the same error message.

Returning to my previous user, I tried again to set ~/Alfred/ as the sync location, but it didn't work. However, when from this non-temporary user, I set the ~/Alfred/ folder of the temporary user as the sync location, it now works.

The other interesting thing is that I have another Mac mini (Intel) in which I'm experiencing the same issue. However, on my MacBook Air M1, everything works nicely.

.

[Vero]

@ojoavizor

19 minutes ago, ojoavizor said:

when I navigate to ~/Alfred/, I can actually see the Alfred preferences package, but the Alfred app doesn't allow me to set it as a sync folder.

 

Could you be more specific when you say it doesn't allow you to set it as a sync folder? If you go to Alfred's Advanced Preferences, click "Set preferences folder..." and navigate to your user directory, what is stopping you from setting that folder?

 

As you say the issues reoccur when you start using Google Drive, can you please confirm your Google Drive is set to be offline? This is the main reason anyone has issues with sync services:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/advanced/sync/#always-offline

[ojoavizor]

@Vero Please, refer to my previous screenshots for more details about Alfred app not allowing me to set a sync location. I've double-checked that Google Drive is set to be offline. Actually, as you can see in my previous post and screenshots, the issue appears as well when I try to set ~/Alfred/ or Dropbox as sync location.

[vitor]

15 minutes ago, ojoavizor said:

the issue appears as well when I try to set ~/Alfred/ or Dropbox as sync location.

Dropbox is no different from Google Drive, it also needs to be set as offline. As for ~/Alfred/, from what I understand from the conversation above you set that after it was already broken by Google Drive.

 

Have you checked the permissions and sizes? Screenshot that info panel on the preferences where they work, and then again after they break on Google Drive to see if anything jumps out.

 

We have established the issue happens specifically when moving the preferences to a cloud provider, so what needs to be figured out is what exactly about your particular setup is the cause.

 

Have you tried moving it to iCloud Drive? All the other major sync services are essentially the same in macOS these days, so trying iCloud Drive is worth a shot so we have more information.

[ojoavizor]

@vitor I have tried both Dropbox and iCloud, ensuring that they are set to be offline. Currently, on my iMac (one of the computers with the issue), I have Alfred working with a copy of the Alfred.preferences file that I am also using without any problems on my newer Mac Air M1 with Google Drive, except that this file is offline and is not synced with my other devices. This non-synced file is located in another user's folder on the same computer.

These are the two files. On the left is the file that is not synced, and on the right is the one synced with GDrive, which only works on the MacAir and not on the iMac or MacMini (both Intel).

 

 

 

[vitor]

As you can see, those are different. And it seems like the one in Google Drive has tighter permissions. Change everyone to Solo lectura.

[ojoavizor]

Didn't work @vitor I added pruebaalfred as user with rights over the file, but didn't work either. Same issue as before.