Search freezes on every letter

[zpete]

Hi, my Alfred (Build 214) is very slow when typing something. It freezes after every letter I type, sometimes with a spinning beachball.

I use a Retina MacBook Pro 15" which is running 10.9 Mavericks GM. I already did a "Clear Application Cache" and "Rebuild OS X Metadata".

 

I recorded a video - its showing me typing the word "test" in normal tempo, waiting until alfred catches up and then hitting the backspace-key 4 times. This is all real-time - as you can see alfred freezes after each letter:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gv6dgpowsoy74z0/Alfred.mov

 

Thanks

Edited October 7, 2013 by zpete

[Andrew]

Hi, my Alfred (Build 214) is very slow when typing something. It freezes after every letter I type, sometimes with a spinning beachball.

I use a Retina MacBook Pro 15" which is running 10.9 Mavericks GM. I already did a "Clear Application Cache" and "Rebuild OS X Metadata".

 

I recorded a video - its showing me typing the word "test" in normal tempo, waiting until alfred catches up and then hitting the backspace-key 4 times. This is all real-time - as you can see alfred freezes after each letter:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gv6dgpowsoy74z0/Alfred.mov

 

Thanks

 

There may be some corruption somewhere causing this to happen. The first thing I would do is fully reset Alfred:

 

http://support.alfredapp.com/kb:reset-alfred

 

If this doesn't work, do a low level reindex using this method:

 

http://skillzdesign.com/blog/clarifies/forcing-spotlight-reindexing-using-terminal/

 

[moving to the help sub-forum for now]

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[zpete]

There may be some corruption somewhere causing this to happen. The first thing I would do is fully reset Alfred:

 

http://support.alfredapp.com/kb:reset-alfred

 

If this doesn't work, do a low level reindex using this method:

 

http://skillzdesign.com/blog/clarifies/forcing-spotlight-reindexing-using-terminal/

 

[moving to the help sub-forum for now]

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

Unfortunately this doesn't work for me. After resetting my Settings and Reindexing its still freezing on every letter I type.

[Andrew]

Unfortunately this doesn't work for me. After resetting my Settings and Reindexing its still freezing on every letter I type.

 

Could you try creating a temporary new account on your Mac, switching to that user and trying from there.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[zpete]

Could you try creating a temporary new account on your Mac, switching to that user and trying from there.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

This is working. With the new Account everything is fast again. But how do I reset my current Account? Deleting the folders from post #2 doesn't seem to be enough.

[Andrew]

This is working. With the new Account everything is fast again. But how do I reset my current Account? Deleting the folders from post #2 doesn't seem to be enough.

 

This is quite a tricky one - there will either be something installed on your main account which is interfering with OS X's metadata querying, or there could be some corruption in one part of your user account which is holding up certain parts of Alfred's non file based querying.

 

You could try turning as many features off in Alfred to identify which particular feature is causing the slow down, and this may help me work out what could be holding Alfred up.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[zpete]

This is quite a tricky one - there will either be something installed on your main account which is interfering with OS X's metadata querying, or there could be some corruption in one part of your user account which is holding up certain parts of Alfred's non file based querying.

 

You could try turning as many features off in Alfred to identify which particular feature is causing the slow down, and this may help me work out what could be holding Alfred up.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

Thanks Andrew, 

 

I switched everything off - most features where switched off anyway because I didn't activate my powerpack. Unfortunately nothing helped - its still freezing. Do you know whats a potential interfering app?

 

Thanks again!

[Andrew]

Thanks Andrew, 

 

I switched everything off - most features where switched off anyway because I didn't activate my powerpack. Unfortunately nothing helped - its still freezing. Do you know whats a potential interfering app?

 

Thanks again!

 

It's impossible for me to say, as it's an external influence which is causing it.

 

I notice this is tagged as Mavericks, if you've been upgrading through the betas, there may be a latent issue which has been left and you'd be better off with a fresh reinstall when 10.9 is released.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[zpete]

It's impossible for me to say, as it's an external influence which is causing it.

 

I notice this is tagged as Mavericks, if you've been upgrading through the betas, there may be a latent issue which has been left and you'd be better off with a fresh reinstall when 10.9 is released.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

Hi Andrew,

 

it seems I found the problem: after quitting Pathfinder Alfred works perfectly. I updated Pathfinder to the latest build and now Alfred and Pathfinder are running in  peaceful coexistence.

 

Thanks again!

[Andrew]

Hi Andrew,

 

it seems I found the problem: after quitting Pathfinder Alfred works perfectly. I updated Pathfinder to the latest build and now Alfred and Pathfinder are running in  peaceful coexistence.

 

Thanks again!

 

Perfect! I'm glad you found a solution

 

Cheers,

Andrew