Snippet expansion not working with the latest stable iTerm & Alfred Beta

[garyh]

Using Alfred 3.0.3

Build 694, Monday 18th July 2016

 

I tried to use one of my snippets (with "Automatically expand snippets..." turned on) in the latest stable version of iTerm (Build 3.0.4

) and it didn't seem to work. It may be a bug with iTerm as well, because the stock macOS text substitutions aren't working either.

 

 

 

(;address is one of my Alfred snippets)

 

Using OS X 10.11.6 (15G31)

[Andrew]

 

It may be a bug with iTerm as well, because the stock macOS text substitutions aren't working either.

 

 

 

Are Alfred's snippets working in other apps fine for you (and OS X text replacement)? I'm not currently running iTerm, but am not seeing an issue in normal apps in the latest OS X or macOS beta.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[garyh]

Mostly - I've had it quit working randomly on all apps intermittently after it didn't work in iTerm (sorry, I can't reliably replicate it!). I've tried reinstalling the Alfred text service a few times, but that didn't seem to work.

[deanishe]

I'm using the exact same version of Alfred and iTerm. Absolutely no problems expanding snippets from Alfred, Typinator or the system.

 

There are a few things that can cause snippet expansion to stop working. The most common cause is that some application has enabled Secure Input mode (for typing in a password) and didn't disable it again afterwards (Chrome has always been terrible for this). This prevents any snippet expander apps from working because they can't monitor your keystrokes.

 

First-rate snippet expansion applications, like Text Expander or Typinator, tell you if Secure Input is enabled (they can't fix it, but they'll let you know why they aren't working and which app caused it). Unfortunately, apps that just "feature" snippets (Alfred, Dash, Keyboard Maestro etc.) don't: they just silently stops working.

 

Another possible cause is some OS X subsystem hanging or getting mucked up.

 

The solution for both is to reboot.

[garyh]

 

First-rate snippet expansion applications, like Text Expander or Typinator, tell you if Secure Input is enabled (they can't fix it, but they'll let you know why they aren't working and which app caused it). Unfortunately, apps that just "feature" snippets (Alfred, Dash, Keyboard Maestro etc.) don't: they just silently stops working.

 

 

Could this be a future feature in Alfred? It would be great to get to the root of this, because I'm actually fairly stumped. I've closed every application and process I can think of besides Alfred and iTerm and it still doesn't seem to work (even after a reboot)

[deanishe]

Yeah, generally I don't think silent failure is the right default behaviour. It can be confusing and frustrating for the user.

[Vero]

Could this be a future feature in Alfred? It would be great to get to the root of this, because I'm actually fairly stumped. I've closed every application and process I can think of besides Alfred and iTerm and it still doesn't seem to work (even after a reboot)

 

 

Could you launch iTerm's menu and check that you don't have "Secure keyboard entry" checked as an option? This feature would stop Alfred and any other apps from being able to expand in iTerm.

 

More details on iTerm's site:

https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-one-page.html#documentation-menu-items.html

 

Cheers,

Vero

[garyh]

AH! Vero is a genius, that was totally it

 

Thank you so much!

Edited July 25, 2016 by garyh