Alfred occasionally misses first letter of search

[mmc]

I'm a pretty fast typist, and occasionally misses the first letter of a query as I type.

 

This is not actually a problem, *if* I can figure out some way to tweak the search behavior.

 

If I type my trigger, then start to type "Mail" but Alfred misses the "M", I get no results at all.

 

Would it be possible to have Alfred match "Mail", "MailMate", and "MailSteward" when I type "ail"? I can't find a setting that would allow this.

[Vero]

I'm a pretty fast typist, and occasionally misses the first letter of a query as I type.

 

This is not actually a problem, *if* I can figure out some way to tweak the search behavior.

 

If I type my trigger, then start to type "Mail" but Alfred misses the "M", I get no results at all.

 

Would it be possible to have Alfred match "Mail", "MailMate", and "MailSteward" when I type "ail"? I can't find a setting that would allow this.

 

The first thing Alfred does when you hit your Alfred hotkey is request focus from OS X. As a result, he starts capturing what you're typing even before the search box appears.

 

Is your Mac under heavy load or an older Mac? It's possible that if it's under particularly heavy load, it might take a moment for OS X to react to you pressing the hotkey.

 

If you get a moment, try creating a temporary user account on your Mac with nothing new installed/running and do a few searches with Alfred. This may help gauge whether something on your main profile is causing a delay in Alfred being given focus

[mmc]

I'm on an iMac 5k, pretty maxxed out. It's not under particularly heavy load, as I'm less likely to use Alfred when compiling. It could be that I am hitting the keys while control is still down (control-space is my trigger) but I don't recall having this issue ever with LaunchBar or Quicksilver. I'm a dedicated Alfred lover, and it could be user error, but I've always had the impression that Alfred triggered just a *bit* slower than other launchers.

[mmc]

So... following up... there is no way to have Alfred do a true substring search, as opposed to only searching from capital letters?

 

 

Because yes, it does seem to me that Alfred is just half a count slow in acquiring focus, and it seems independent of what else is running on my system.

Edited May 6, 2015 by mmc

[Vero]

So... following up... there is no way to have Alfred do a true substring search, as opposed to only searching from capital letters?

 

 

Because yes, it does seem to me that Alfred is just half a count slow in acquiring focus, and it seems independent of what else is running on my system.

 

You can do a substring search by using a wildcard (* star). For example, "'s*ari" (which is spacebar to bring up the file search, followed by the letter "s", a star to wildcard the middle of the word, and the letters "ari") will bring up Safari.

 

Andrew has done some benchmarking on speed; From the point at which the OS X registered hotkey is triggered to the point where Alfred requests keyboard focus from OS X is around 1/10000th of a second. 

 

As I've previously suggested, have you tried creating a new user account with no additional apps running on it and using the default hotkey combination? This will allow you to identify whether anything else on your main profile is causing a delay and whether any third-party apps are interfering.

[Andrew]

Just to chip in on this... It's definitely unexpected for Alfred to miss the first character you type, I suspect there could be something happening to prevent Alfred from getting instant focus from OS X. Vero's suggestion of temporarily trying a new user account and using the default hotkey (alt+space) is a good way of working out if something on your main profile is interfering with Alfred.

 

I'm sure we'll get to the bottom if this for you!

[mmc]

I did try that, and did not notice any difference. It does not happen often, maybe once or twice a day (out of 40-50 triggers) and maybe I am just hitting the key before I release "Control" It's certainly possible. I'll try to be more conscious of what I am doing when it happens.

 

I don't ever remember having the trouble with other launchers, but I don't want to go back and test them, either. I like my Alfred. :-)