How to find files not showing up in the default 20 results?

[serioustiger]

Hi - I'm sure there's a really simple answer but this is driving me nuts.

 

I'm trying to return a specific file containing the word "quota" in the filename.  Unfortunately I have many files with the word "quota" in the filename, and using that search string does not return the one I want in the default 20 results.  This is one master "quota" file that I use all the time, and is the only one I would ever want Alfred to quick launch, but unfortunately the search results are spammed full of other "quota" files that I need to keep but rarely use.

 

How do I "force" this one file to show up in the results?  When I search "quota" I do actually see the folder in which the file resides, and I can open the folder and then open the file - but I want to go straight to the file.  If Alfred learns from past behaviour, how does it do that?  It apparently can't see that every time I use this search, I go into the same folder and open the same file, which is really what I would like it to learn.  It also apparently doesn't look at simply how often I use the file, because it would be number 1 result for sure.

 

By the way, I also tried raising the number of search results to the maximum of 40 in "result limit" but that seems to have no effect - I still only get 20 results - presume this is a bug?

 

Thanks for any help you guys can provide!

 

Kind regards

~Guy.

[deanishe]

One way I got around this was to temporarily exclude a lot of the unwanted results via the Spotlight Privacy tab in System Preferences. Hopefully, then the folder you want will appear in Alfred's results. Action it a couple of times to train Alfred to prefer that folder for that query, then remove the temporary entries from the Privacy tab.

 

This is definitely annoying behaviour, especially as Alfred doesn't prioritise exact matches over partial ones (e.g. I search for "2015", but folders named "2015" aren't shown, while ones named, e.g. "2015-06-01" are).

[Andrew]

If you open this file in Finder, then it should theoretically show up in Alfred next time as when Alfred doesn't have internal knowledge, he falls back on OS X's metadata's last used information. Alternatively, navigate to it in Alfred's file system navigation and open it directly. This will give usage knowledge to Alfred.

 

If it's still not showing up, you may need to reindex your Mac's metadata as it may be not functioning correctly. There is a shortcut for this in Alfred's Advanced prefs.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[deanishe]

That's a lot simpler than my way.

 

Wish I'd known about that earlier. Is Alfred's behaviour documented anywhere?

[Andrew]

That's a lot simpler than my way.

 

Wish I'd known about that earlier. Is Alfred's behaviour documented anywhere?

 

 

While I've talked and hinted about this in the past, Alfred's learning, knowledge and sorting is a bit of a secret (which is why, more often than not, Alfred nails the result you want when Spotlight doesn't). Happy to say that when Alfred doesn't have knowledge for a particular file, he falls back onto OS X / Spotlight knowledge though.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[serioustiger]

Guys - sorry for the satellite delay, have been travelling this week.

 

This solution worked - because I didn't really have a choice, I started opening the file through Finder (Pathfinder actually) and now it is showing second on my Alfred list.  A short while before it's number 1, I think.

 

Thanks!

[deanishe]

While I've talked and hinted about this in the past, Alfred's learning, knowledge and sorting is a bit of a secret (which is why, more often than not, Alfred nails the result you want when Spotlight doesn't). Happy to say that when Alfred doesn't have knowledge for a particular file, he falls back onto OS X / Spotlight knowledge though.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

 

 

I understand the motivation, but given that Alfred's knowledge is stored in an sqlite database and it'd be relatively easy for someone determined enough to reverse engineer the behaviour sufficiently well, is it really worth hiding the details of how Alfred works from its users?

 

I understand that Alfred's knowledge is "the clever bit", but ultimately, you do give that functionality away for free with the non-Powerpack version of Alfred.

 

It's the workflow API that users have to pay for. In that regard, isn't that where Alfred's real value lies?

 

Application launchers are plentiful. If someone took it upon themselves to create a competitor to Alfred, replicating the workflow ecosystem would be the hard part. Which, again, is what people buy the Powerpack (i.e. pay) for.