BillHiggins Posted November 17, 2013 Share Posted November 17, 2013 I've used Alfred v1 from the Mac App Store for a long time but today decided to upgrade to Alfred v2 from the web site and bought the PowerPack. I uninstalled Alfred v1 via Launchpad and installed Alfred v2 via downloads -> unzip -> move to /Applications. Finally I entered my Powerpack code successfully. However, when I tried to set my Alfred hotkey to Command Space, it wouldn't allow me - when I press the combination in the preference window, nothing happens. Other hotkey options (e.g. Alt Space, Double Command) work just fine. Under the preference I saw some text "Some hotkeys may not work, please refer to the help". I looked through the help but couldn't find anything relevant. I would greatly appreciate if someone could help me reenable the hotkey I've been using for several years. It's pretty maddening not to have it available. Link to comment
BillHiggins Posted November 17, 2013 Author Share Posted November 17, 2013 One other data point. I just tried it on my wife's account on the same Mac and in her account I could set the hotkey to Command Space with no problem. Perhaps I have a bad preference file somewhere? Link to comment
jdfwarrior Posted November 17, 2013 Share Posted November 17, 2013 One other data point. I just tried it on my wife's account on the same Mac and in her account I could set the hotkey to Command Space with no problem. Perhaps I have a bad preference file somewhere? This typically only happens when something else is holding on to the hotkey (previous version of Alfred, Spotlight, etc). Have you tried rebooting to see if the problem resolves itself? Link to comment
BillHiggins Posted November 17, 2013 Author Share Posted November 17, 2013 Hi David, I did try rebooting (twice) but no luck. I looked through every option under "Keyboard" preferences and discovered that the Command+Space shortcut had been reserved by Input Sources -> "Select the previous input source". I cleared this shortcut and then was able to assign Command+Space to Alfred. I would strongly suggest that instead of just ignoring the assignment request, Alfred helps the user understand what shortcut is already assigned. It would have saved me two hours of trial and error. Link to comment
Andrew Posted November 17, 2013 Share Posted November 17, 2013 I would strongly suggest that instead of just ignoring the assignment request, Alfred helps the user understand what shortcut is already assigned. It would have saved me two hours of trial and error. I wish I could do that... the issue is, when OS X is using a hotkey or has it assigned elsewhere, the pressed hotkeys aren't even passed to Alfred when trying to set it, so as far as Alfred is concerned, you haven't even tried to set a hotkey. There is also no way for Alfred to find out what has reserved the hotkey. Link to comment
Arvid Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 In Mac OS X Sierra it's Siri stealing the Spotlight (pun intended), and you have to venture into the Spotlight preference pane to switch from "Holding down Command-Space" to something else to get access to it for Alfred. Link to comment
ManicDee Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 Apologies for the thread necro, this is the first result for "alfred command space hot key". I had Alfred 2 running quite happily with Command+Space as the hotkey. Then I upgraded to Alfred 3 and could no longer use the Command+Space hot key. I launched Alfred 2, set Alfred 2's hot key to Ctrl+`, but still no luck with Alfred 3. Turns out that Command+Space was being used by OS X for "switch input source" (even though I only have one defined). I un-checked the boxes for "next input source" and "previous input source" and now Alfred 3 can use Command+Space. In addition, the options for "next input source" and "previous input source" are no longer available in Keyboard > Shortcuts. Link to comment
Vero Posted February 2, 2017 Share Posted February 2, 2017 We provide a troubleshooting page for users who have issues setting Cmd + Space, as it's a hotkey that can be reserved by a few different things, as you identified: https://www.alfredapp.com/help/troubleshooting/cmd-space/ Cheers, Vero Link to comment
zanthony Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 Hello, I've just got caught out by a recent macOS update grabbing Cmd+Space back for "switch input source" (I think), and after some Googling found this thread and have now fixed the problem. I had a similar problem when I first started using Alfred, at that time it was the Spotlight default shortcut of Cmd+Space that was the problem. I totally get that its not possible for you to handle this situation in an ideal way (per Andrew's comment above). Given this though, could you possibly put some text or a link to the troubleshooting guide that Vero referenced onto the General tab in Alfred preferences? Its such a weird thing the way trying to setup Cmd+Space is just ignored, and IMHO I think many (most?) users will assume its just a bug/quirk of Alfred rather than macOS. I think it would be a useful service for users stuck by the same thing and would potentially prevent them from thinking poorly of Alfred. Cheers! Link to comment
Vero Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 @zanthony I agree that it can be tricky to know why Cmd + Space isn't available; I'll look at improving the documentation, and we'll make a link to it more obvious from the General preferences in an upcoming update. Cheers, Vero Link to comment
zanthony Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 Sounds good, thanks @vero. Link to comment
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