Searching with Alfred

[stevenjrowan]

Hello

 

I am a new user of Alfred 5 on OS Ventura, and have a power pack. I

 

I would like to use a file filter workflow to simultaneously search Apple Notes, Drafts and a few folders in my one drive. I often know I have a file called or containing a specific word eg “carpal”, but can’t remember if the file is an apple note, a draft, or a word document within a folder

 

I hope that question makes sense, and I look forward to hearing from anyone who might be able to help

 

[Stephen_C]

Welcome to the forum.

 

One difficulty you will face is the ability to search Apple Notes. The notes are stored in a sqlite database in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes.datastore/Data (assuming you're using a reasonably up to date version of macOS) so it's not a simple matter of searching for note content: you'd have to query the database. As I don't use Drafts I don't know how or where it stores its data. I suspect, however, the problem may be that you will need differing techniques to search the data you mention.

 

I appreciate that's not paerticularly helpful but it may be useful when you're thinking about how you might rationalise the search and find some common denominator for the things you wish to find (excluding, I suspect, Apple Notes for the reason I've mentioned).

 

Stephen

[stevenjrowan]

Thank you. Very helpful. I suspect that you are correct. I have separate workflows which search in drafts and notes, so that’s something. I had wondered if there a way of unifying the search. Thanks again