Open Contacts App from Alfred

[jcordoba]

Is there a way of setting up Alfred so that when I do a search for a contact using Alfred, that I can actually open the contact in the Contacts app? It currently give me the option to open it in Alfred, but I'd like the option to open the contact in the actual Contacts app.  

 

Thank you in advance!

 

-Jim

[Vero]

Is there a way of setting up Alfred so that when I do a search for a contact using Alfred, that I can actually open the contact in the Contacts app? It currently give me the option to open it in Alfred, but I'd like the option to open the contact in the actual Contacts app.  

 

Thank you in advance!

 

-Jim

 

Hi Jim,

 

If you never want to open the contacts in Alfred, go to Alfred's Preferences, under Features > Contacts, just uncheck the box that says "Open Contacts in Alfred" and the contact will automatically open in the Contacts app itself.

 

If alternatively, you just want to sometimes open in Contacts and sometimes in Alfred, leave the box above ticked. Instead of pressing the return key when you find your contact, do Cmd + O to open it in Contacts app

 

Cheers,

Vero

[patlee]

Hi Jim,

 

If you never want to open the contacts in Alfred, go to Alfred's Preferences, under Features > Contacts, just uncheck the box that says "Open Contacts in Alfred" and the contact will automatically open in the Contacts app itself.

 

If alternatively, you just want to sometimes open in Contacts and sometimes in Alfred, leave the box above ticked. Instead of pressing the return key when you find your contact, do Cmd + O to open it in Contacts app

 

Cheers,

Vero

 

 

Thank you for the workaround! In the future, it would be great to see an on-screen option for this under Results, just so it's a little more straight forward than key combination. I think Alfred's contacts view is great, but would appreciate seeing the on-screen choice to open it up in the Contacts app. 

[Vero]

Thank you for the workaround! In the future, it would be great to see an on-screen option for this under Results, just so it's a little more straight forward than key combination. I think Alfred's contacts view is great, but would appreciate seeing the on-screen choice to open it up in the Contacts app. 

 

 

As with most of Alfred's features, you can find all the details in the preferences; Under Features > Contacts, it says "If you enable this feature, you can still open contacts in the OS X Contacts app using cmd + o"

 

We tend to leave non-essential information to the preferences rather than the app, as a conscious choice to keep things uncluttered since this is information you only need to see once. As such, when you're discovering a new feature, it's worth taking a look at its preferences tab to see how you can use it.

 

If you need more details, click on the question mark in that preferences pane to launch the relevant page on our help site.

 

Cheers,

Vero

[deanishe]

IMO, it would be more intuitive if the "Open contact in Alfred/Contacts.app" feature worked like normal workflow results, i.e. ENTER for the default action and CMD+ENTER for the alternate.
 
It's a standard Alfred idiom to use CMD/CTRL/OPT/SHIFT+ENTER to perform alternate actions, while CMD+O is only used with contacts (AFAIK), so people are more likely to try CMD+ENTER, and to remember it.
 
Also, the subtitle should then change to "Open contact in Contacts.app" or "Open contact in Alfred" when CMD is held down (just as it changes to "Search for 'x' in Spotlight" when you hold down OPT when a contact is selected).

Edited January 26, 2016 by deanishe

[h2ner]

Agree with deanishe and was thinking the same: cmd-return to open in Contacts. I didn't know of cmd-O until I found this thread. As the modifiers control and option offer other options, I think cmd is a good choice for perhaps the most often wanted other action.

[LukasM]

Same here, would be more intuitive if it was set up this way, researching the issue is what brought me here!

[Andrew]

cmd+o is a standard shortcut throughout macOS, for example, cmd+o on a file in Finder will open it. Alfred adopts cmd+o to "Open" any file which may otherwise have an action. These actions include:

 

- Showing contacts in Alfred, cmd+o will open the contact in macOS.

- If the File Search > Navigation shortcut has been set so that return navigates into a folder, cmd+o will open that folder in Finder.

 

etc.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[deanishe]

10 minutes ago, Andrew said:

cmd+o on a file in Finder will open it

 

I never knew that. I've always used ⌘↓.

 

⌘O is, in my mind, the shortcut for the Open File… dialog. Something I would never, ever think to use in Alfred.

 

10 minutes ago, Andrew said:

If the File Search > Navigation shortcut has been set so that return navigates into a folder, cmd+o will open that folder in Finder

 

So does ⌘↩, which is what I've always used.

 

Am I the only one?

 

In any case, is there any reason why ⌘↩ can't also be used, as it is in FS Navigation mode.

Edited January 30, 2019 by deanishe

[Andrew]

5 minutes ago, deanishe said:

In any case, is there any reason why ⌘↩ can't also be used, as it is in FS Navigation mode.

 

This is the default configured shortcut for the default results too (in Alfred's Advanced preferences) - Reveal in Finder.

[deanishe]

I know. That's one of the main reason I think it should also work with contacts: it works with basically everything else in Alfred and, in my mental model at least, is the default "alternate action" hotkey in Alfred.

 

What do other people think? Am I the only one who associates ⌘O with the "Open File…" dialog and ⌘↩ with "alternate action" in Alfred?

 

[Andrew]

@deanishe It's a fair point - I'll add a note

[deanishe]

Thanks.

 

I'd really like to hear what other people think: I've no idea if other Alfred users' mental models are at all similar to mine (apart from the 4 folks that liked my post).

 

There's also a potential conflict when using Spotlight to provide contact data, as then there really are files on disk to reveal (though I'm not sure if anyone would want to do that except to open them in Contacts.app).

[Andrew]

@deanishe I think my original reasoning is following the behaviour of Finder, but I can absolutely appreciate that Alfred has grown way beyond the original vision. And now workflows are a significant part of Alfred, the paradigm has shifted and modifier alternatives are normal.

 

I had already thought about when Alfred is configured for Spotlight provide contact data, and I'm going to leave that to be treated as a file for now, otherwise it would need a "fudge" outside of Alfred's framework (to treat it differently to the Contacts system workflow where I can just wire in an alternative action). This view may change though.

[nikivi]

19 hours ago, deanishe said:

Am I the only one who associates ⌘O with the "Open File…" dialog and ⌘↩ with "alternate action" in Alfred?

 

I associate ⌘↩ with alternate action indeed. But don't really associate ⌘O with 'opening' files as I never really use that hotkey and nearly always remap it to something else. I find cmd+o dialogue atrocious for finding files so I let Alfred do all the finding and then open the file appropriately in the app I want.

[nikivi]

If I may, I would love to bring this thread to attention as it is a bit relevant to searching of Contacts
 

I very often search people by contact name to open their Twitter/GitHub and such customizable actions would save me quite a bit of time. 🧡

 

[mlondon]

I've got a new question regarding Opening Contacts app from Alfred.

 

In Mojave, when I searched for a contact in Alfred and pressed Return, it would open the main Contacts window to my desired contact, whether or not Contacts app was already running.

 

In Catalina, when I search for a contact, if the Contacts app is not currently running, it will open the main Contacts window to my desired contact.

BUT, if Contacts window is already open, then Alfred opens a new, seperate window with just that single Contact.

 

How can I get Alfred to revert back to the previous (prefered) behaviour of simply opening the main Contacts window to my desired contact?

 

Thank you...

 

[mlondon]

Ping.....

 

[Andrew]

@mlondon unfortunately, Alfred doesn't dictate this behaviour. Alfred uses the addressbook URL scheme to open contacts in macOS. Once this URL has been passed to macOS, Alfred has no further interaction. This is discussed in a bit more detail here:

 

 

 

I personally preferred the Mojave behaviour too.

[mlondon]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your reply.

 

If do the same search in Spotlight, the Contacts.app does NOT open a new window.

Does Spotlight not use the same Addressbook URL scheme?

Is this bug still present in Big Sur?

 

Thanks,

Matthew

[deanishe]

5 hours ago, mlondon said:

Does Spotlight not use the same Addressbook URL scheme?

 

Doesn't appear to. Remember that Spotlight can do whatever it wants because it's part of the OS.

[mlondon]

Reopening my earlier issue regarding opening a Contact with Alfred.

In Big Sur, when I search for a Contact, it opens Contacts app, and then opens the desired Contact in its own seperate Window. Each new search results in a new window, so after awhile I've got a checkerboard of contact windows open.

Prior to Big Sur & Catalina, Alfred behaved as if I were using Spotlight, ie: Search for a Contact and it goes to that Contact within the main Contact window.

 

My workaround is to use Spotlight to open contacts, but my fingers are so hard-wired to use Alfred, I often forget.

Is there a way, perhaps using a Workflow, to pass Alfreds Contact search to Spotlight and have Spotlight open the Contact within the main Contacts window?

Any other solution to this issue?

Thank you.