Contact searching is accent-sensitive

[tjh]

Hi,

 

I'm on OS X 10.10.5 and Alfred is on v2.8.3.

 

I've noticed that Alfred doesn't search Contacts with an accent-insensitive collation like Spotlight does.

 

I have a contact entered as "Rob Muñoz". Using Spotlight, I can search with "Munoz" and he will come up. Alfred won't do the same.

 

Now the interesting thing is Alfred's folders and files search logic does seem to use an accent-insensitive collation. After creating two folders named "TestFolder" and "TestFölder", both will show up in a "show" or "open" search when using the terms "folder" or "földer".

 

So, it seems the issue may be specific to Contacts alone.

 

Thanks for an awesome product!

 

Best,

Trevor

Edited March 11, 2016 by tjh

[deanishe]

The root cause is that the Spotlight API does diacritic folding, the AddressBook API doesn't.

To get diacritic folding with contacts, turn on:

Alfred Preferences > Features > Contacts > Advanced > Use Spotlight metadata for searching contacts.

[tjh]

@deanishe thanks! I had somehow overlooked that setting.

[deanishe]

By the way, if you're mostly interested in emailing contacts, check out my MailTo workflow.
 
It handles diacritic folding and fuzzy searching (e.g. "js" will match "John Smith"), and makes sending emails to multiple recipients, and especially contact groups—which almost no email client handles properly—a doddle.

[tjh]

will take a look!

 

By the way, if you're mostly interested in emailing contacts, check out my MailTo workflow.
 
It handles diacritic folding and fuzzy searching (e.g. "js" will match "John Smith"), and makes sending emails to multiple recipients, and especially contact groups—which almost no email client handles properly—a doddle.