Alfred not finding items in ~ with open or find

[JC Denton]

Okay, this is driving me batty.  I've got several items (PDFs, JPEGs, etc.) directly in home (~) that Alfred can't seem to find with open or find.  Spotlight can find them, but Alfred cannot.  I've got no directories listed in Spotlight's privacy options and I've rebuilt the index once already.

 

Is the base/root of the home directory excluded by default for some reason?

[Andrew]

Okay, this is driving me batty.  I've got several items (PDFs, JPEGs, etc.) directly in home (~) that Alfred can't seem to find with open or find.  Spotlight can find them, but Alfred cannot.  I've got no directories listed in Spotlight's privacy options and I've rebuilt the index once already.

 

Is the base/root of the home directory excluded by default for some reason?

 

Alfred only [recursively] includes folders within ~ by default which means he can exclude the contents of ~/Library which noises up the results with undesirable matches. You can change this behaviour by un-ticking "Include folders in Home" in Alfred's Features > Default Results and manually adding your home folder to Alfred's Search Scope above this.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[JC Denton]

Alfred only [recursively] includes folders within ~ by default which means he can exclude the contents of ~/Library which noises up the results with undesirable matches. You can change this behaviour by un-ticking "Include folders in Home" in Alfred's Features > Default Results and manually adding your home folder to Alfred's Search Scope above this.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

Hi Andrew,

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

I notice that change is under the Default Results section, does it also affect File Search operations (open/find)? I don't mind that the files aren't showing up in my default search...

Edited July 10, 2014 by JC Denton

[Andrew]

Hi Andrew,

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

I notice that change is under the Default Results section, does it also affect File Search operations (open/find)? I don't mind that the files aren't showing up in my default search...

 

The search scope affects all file based searching within Alfred. Remember that you could always turn off the default open and find searches and configure a few workflow file filters with their very own file scopes separate to the default search.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[JC Denton]

The search scope affects all file based searching within Alfred. Remember that you could always turn off the default open and find searches and configure a few workflow file filters with their very own file scopes separate to the default search.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

Gotcha.  That worked like a champ.  I haven't seen any clutter from ~/Library yet, but if it becomes a problem, couldn't I just theoretically add it to Spotlight's privacy exclusions?

 

Thanks for your help by the way !

Edited July 10, 2014 by JC Denton

[Andrew]

Gotcha.  That worked like a champ.  I haven't seen any clutter from ~/Library yet, but if it becomes a problem, couldn't I just theoretically add it to Spotlight's privacy exclusions?

 

Thanks for your help by the way !

 

Theoretically yes, but there are key folders [deep] inside ~/Library which need to be indexed for Alfred and other apps. Alfred excludes ~/Library by default and includes specific folders automatically when necessary... so I wouldn't recommend adding ~/Library to Spotlight privacy.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[Jono]

Theoretically yes, but there are key folders [deep] inside ~/Library which need to be indexed for Alfred and other apps. Alfred excludes ~/Library by default and includes specific folders automatically when necessary... so I wouldn't recommend adding ~/Library to Spotlight privacy.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

I often want to open the Preferences and Application Support folders in ~/Library, but Alfred doesn't see them, even if I add ~/Library to Alfred's default search scope. Is there any way to be able to get them to appear in Alfred?

 

 

[jdfwarrior]

I often want to open the Preferences and Application Support folders in ~/Library, but Alfred doesn't see them, even if I add ~/Library to Alfred's default search scope. Is there any way to be able to get them to appear in Alfred?

 

Try doing this with a file filter workflow and make sure to set it to show system files in the results. That should work

[Jono]

Try doing this with a file filter workflow and make sure to set it to show system files in the results. That should work

 

 

Thanks, that works well.

 

Strangely enough it won't return ~/Library/Preferences for me. I can search for and find ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Containers/ etc. just not that folder. I tried it on a couple of different computers, but it doesn't find that folder. Strange