Action on selected files

[goyan]

Hi, I've heard so much good things about Alfred so I decided to give it a try to replace Launch Bar. I have a small problem if any of you can give me some suggestion.

 

With Launch Bar, when I have 2 image files selected in Finder, double tap ⌘, Launch Bar appears, then I can select Adobe Acrobat to create a single PDF with 2 pages. With Alfred, when call up the Actions menu after I selected 2 files in Finder, I choose "Open with..." Adobe Acrobat, however, in this case, Acrobat creates 2 pdf files each with only 1 page. Is there a way I can remedy this behaviour or am I using the Action menu incorrectly? Or should I use Workflow instead?

 

I have the Powerpack activated.

[deanishe]

This is a known "issue".

 

What happens is that Alfred calls the application for each file instead of calling it once with multiple files. 

 

The problem is that some applications (can't remember which ones) fail when called with multiple files at once. The same is true for other apps being called multiple times in rapid succession, but fixing those apps would require breaking ones that currently work with Alfred…

 

You can get the behaviour you want with a Run Script action and the open command. Set Language = /bin/bash with input as argv. Use the following command in the Script box:

 

open -a "Name of Application" "$@"

 

You probably want to connect that to a File Action. 

Edited October 31, 2016 by deanishe

[Andrew]

2 hours ago, deanishe said:

The problem is that some applications (can't remember which ones) fail when called with multiple files at once.

 

The most simple case is opening multiple images in Safari which breaks Safari if it's not already running. Affects Finder as well as Alfred.

 

I've actually reported this as a bug to Apple and it was marked as duplicate, so they are already aware. I'm keeping the ticket open in my bug tracker and as soon as Apple fix this bug, I'll change the behaviour in Alfred.

 

Cheers,

Andrew