Alfred Preferences Sync modification date (Dropbox) is old

[Marc Bourassa]

Hi,

 

I just upgraded to Alfred 4. When I reached the part in the migration where I could copy my existing preferences or pull those from my DropBox Alfred Sync folder, I could see that the modification dates for everything in the folder were all pretty old. I could find nothing in there newer than 2018.

 

So I elected to just copy my preferences from the local instance of Alfred 3. 

 

Then I deleted the Alfred.alfredpreferences file and set up the sync for Alfred 4 to point to my dropbox folder again. 

 

Is it normal that Alfred.alfredpreferences shows a modified date of May26, 2016? Also that Nothing in the folder (show package contents) has anything resembling a current timestamp?

 

Check out the screenshots of both the top level and the first level of Alfred.alfredpreferences.  Shouldn't at least the clipboard snippets.alfdb show a recent timestamp?

 

[deanishe]

39 minutes ago, Marc Bourassa said:

Is it normal that Alfred.alfredpreferences shows a modified date of May26, 2016?

 

Yes. Alfred.alfredpreferences is a so-called package (like applications). Finder presents it as if it were a single file, but it’s actually a directory.

 

The reason it has such an old modtime is because it hasn’t changed, its contents have.

[Marc Bourassa]

4 hours ago, deanishe said:

 

Yes. Alfred.alfredpreferences is a so-called package (like applications). Finder presents it as if it were a single file, but it’s actually a directory.

 

The reason it has such an old modtime is because it hasn’t changed, its contents have.

Thanks Deanishe,

 

However I've already dug into the package and can find nothing with a current modified date.

 

i.e. in the example above, even the clipboard snippets file is showing as over 3 years old.

[deanishe]

Do you use clipboard snippets?

 

That's not the clipboard history. That isn't synced.

[Marc Bourassa]

18 hours ago, deanishe said:

Do you use clipboard snippets?

 

That's not the clipboard history. That isn't synced.

 

Yes, I use both all day every day. Snippets were one of the features that drove me to seek out Alfred in the first place.

 

In fact I added a new one today just for smiles and giggles and there has been no change to the modified date in the Alfred.alfredpreferences package snippets file.

 

It's supposed to back up in real time so the modification date should have changed immediately. But I waited for another 10 minutes just to see.  Still showing January of 2016.

 

I can guarantee you I've made snippet updates within the past 3 1/2 years.

[Andrew]

snippets.alfdb is a legacy file from many years ago. Snippets are now stored in the snippets folder as individual json files.

[Marc Bourassa]

3 minutes ago, Andrew said:

snippets.alfdb is a legacy file from many years ago. Snippets are now stored in the snippets folder as individual json files.

 

Ah, I was not even looking at the snippets folder. I can see the update for today's test snippet (and the other recently updated snippets) are represented there. 

 

OK, I think that gives me what I need. I didn't realize that there would be leftover legacy items in the newly created preferences package, but I suppose it's safer from a compatibility POV to just leave them. Just a bit confusing when casually eyeballing the contents as I was doing.

 

Thanks!