Preferences (Still) Not Persisting

[stephenmcleod]

I've discovered a nasty problem whereby Alfred won't read back the settings it has saved in its pref file.

 

Upon quitting, all of the settings are reset, including web searches, appearance, and hot keys, but the snippets remain in place.

 

I found the following forum thread:

 

http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/3660-preferences-persisted-but-always-ignored-on-mavericks/

 

which has the same issue. It seems like there was never any resolution there, except to just manually change the preferences every time Alfred boots up, back to what they should be. This isn't an adequate solution, as to re-input all of the missing web searches would take forever.

 

I have tried switching the synch folder, and replacing the pref file in each, as well as making sure the permissions on these files are fine, but no dice. 

 

Any ideas?

 

Edit:

 

I ran the system updates and rebooted a couple of times and it seems to be working now. Looks like there's some weird OS conflicts going on somewhere, for anybody who comes across this problem in future. 
 

Edited September 11, 2014 by stephenmcleod

[Vero]

I've discovered a nasty problem whereby Alfred won't read back the settings it has saved in its pref file.

 

Hi Stephen,

 

Could you confirm where you're syncing your preferences? We recommend avoiding the /Dropbox/Apps folder as it's caused problems for numerous users (even though the Dropbox team can't identify any reason why this would be) I'd say that when users report preferences issues, 99% of the time, this has been the root of it.

 

Also, launch Disk Utility and repair permissions on your Mac, as this can sometimes affect preferences as well.

 

If neither of the above resolve your issue, could you please try creating a new account on your Mac and seeing if preferences save normally? This will help identify whether the issue is specific to your user profile or across your whole Mac.

 

I'll keep an eye on this thread today

 

Cheers,

Vero

[stephenmcleod]

Hi Stephen,

 

Could you confirm where you're syncing your preferences? We recommend avoiding the /Dropbox/Apps folder as it's caused problems for numerous users (even though the Dropbox team can't identify any reason why this would be) I'd say that when users report preferences issues, 99% of the time, this has been the root of it.

 

Also, launch Disk Utility and repair permissions on your Mac, as this can sometimes affect preferences as well.

 

If neither of the above resolve your issue, could you please try creating a new account on your Mac and seeing if preferences save normally? This will help identify whether the issue is specific to your user profile or across your whole Mac.

 

I'll keep an eye on this thread today

 

Cheers,

Vero

 

Hey Vero!

 

Thanks for the quick reply, and apologies for freaking out a bit. My priority was to get all the web searches back, so when I found they were still saved, the panic was over. 

 

It looks like there was a conflict with the OS (I'm on 10.8.5 atm) which was preventing Alfred from reading the preferences file. I was just using the default location, though it's handy to know I can set it up somewhere to synch! (Not Dropbox though ;p)

 

I'm going to upgrade OS later and see if I experience the same issue with Mavericks again, so will report back if anything weird happens.

 

Cheers!