Alfred input field hangs periodically [⌘Space]

[swehba]

Running Alfred 5.1.4 on macOS 14.0. Periodically — I cannot detect a patten — when I open Alfred the input field appears as normal, but when I try to type into the field nothing happens. Keyboard input to all other apps is just fine. Spotlight works just fine. I have to force quit Alfred and relaunch it, and then it will work OK for a while until its input field eventually freezes again. Has anyone else observed this behavior? Any suggestions? Many thanks.

[Stephen_C]

What shortcuts are you using to launch:

• Alfred; and
• Spotlight?

Stephen

[swehba]

⌘space for Alfred, ⌥space for Spotlight.

 

This has always worked for me. Just recently has Alfred started to hang/freeze. I realized I was not running the latest version of macOS. I now am, and the effect is the same.

[Stephen_C]

Have you granted Alfred full disk access in System Settings?

 

Stephen

[Andrew]

Note that the input field hanging is almost entirely due to multiple things trying to use ⌘Space at the same time. If you need to use ⌘Space for your hotkey, there is more than just Spotlight using this combo. Take a look at this page:

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/cmd-space/

 

If you continue to experience this issue, please set Spotlight back to the default ⌘Space, and use ⌥Space for Alfred. Let me know if this doesn't help, and we can explore other avenues.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[moving to Discussion and Help]

[swehba]

The problem is not in getting Alfred to open in response to a keypress. That works just fine. The problem is that once Alfred opens, the input field does not accept input. All other apps work just fine.

[Andrew]

24 minutes ago, swehba said:

The problem is not in getting Alfred to open in response to a keypress. That works just fine. The problem is that once Alfred opens, the input field does not accept input. All other apps work just fine.

 

This is the exact behaviour of the ⌘Space conflict.

[swehba]

I am still having a problem with this. Alfred will work fine for "a while" and then it starts to hang on the input field. As it is, I have stopped using Alfred after having used it for more than a decade. I cannot recommend Alfred unless this issue is resolved. Even if this is due to my having mapped conflicting keys — which I do not believe is the case — Alfred should provide an easy way of diagnosing this problem given that it is so easy to do.

[Andrew]

9 minutes ago, swehba said:

I cannot recommend Alfred unless this issue is resolved

 

Hangs are extremely rare in Alfred, and when there are hangs, this is due to issues on a specific Mac. As such, we have to treat these on a case by case basis, and in every case, we manage to work out what is happening on a user's Mac causing the hang.

 

Have you tried resetting the hotkeys as I asked? If you have reset the hotkeys (Spotlight to ⌘Space, and Alfred to his default ⌥Space) and you're still getting the hangs happening, could you export a diagnostics from Alfred by typing ?diagnostics into him. Also, during a hang, open Activity Monitor, select Alfred and then Sample Process from the view menu. If you could email both of these to our info@ address, I'll take a look to see what could be causing the issue.

 

Please be as open as possible with me trying to provide you with support, the more information you can provide, and the more you try my suggestions, the faster we can get to the bottom of this.

 

Thanks,

Andrew