Apple released macOS Sonoma 14.1 last week, which resolves the rendering bug affecting Alfred in macOS 14.0. In line with this, we released Alfred 5.1.4, which remove the mitigations we added to work around the Sonoma bug, along with a few more fixes and improvements.
Be sure to update to macOS Sonoma 14.1, and take a look at Alfred 5.1.4's change log to see what's new.
On Tuesday, 26th September, Apple will be releasing macOS Sonoma to the general public. Alfred 5 is stable on Sonoma, so feel free to upgrade to it if you're keen to adopt the new OS early.
There is one known issue; A rendering bug present in Sonoma causes Alfred's main results to sometimes appear in the incorrect location. (This bug has been reported to Apple with a reproducible case as Feedback reference FB13188204.)
It doesn't affect the contents of your Alfred results, only their visual placement. The Clipboard & Snippets, File Navigation, and preferences all render as expected.
First, ensure you're using Alfred 5.1.3, which includes a few mitigations to work around the visual glitch.
You may only rarely see the issue, and it may not bother you, but if you prefer, you can enable a workaround which you'll find in Alfred's General preferences.
Open Alfred's preferences to the General tab to enable "Default Results Fixed Size" in the Sonoma Rendering Bug box in the top right. This will make Alfred's window a fixed height based on the number of results you've selected for Alfred to show, and therefore won't exhibit the bug.
This is a temporary measure, which we'll remove as soon as the issue is fixed.
You can update to Alfred 5.1.3 from Alfred's Update tab, or download it from alfredapp.com.
We recommend using Alfred 5 with macOS Sonoma, so if you have an older Powerpack license, you can upgrade at a discount. Not yet taking advantage of the great Powerpack features Alfred has to offer? You can get a new Single User or Mega Supporter license to get started!
When we say that you can create an Alfred workflow without code in a matter of minutes, we're not kidding!
I created the first version of this workflow in under two minutes to solve a recurring problem by using 3 workflow objects.
The problem: Apple's default format for iPhone photos is .heic. However, this isn't a universal format and many non-Apple devices and websites don't accept that format.
The solution: Rather than manually opening the .heic photo in Preview and exporting it to .jpg, I used the Automation Task Convert Image Format, which can be found in the Image Manipulation group.
Two minutes, done!
I then let my teammate Vítor loose with the workflow... and, in his own words, he got a little carried away. :D
The workflow is now far more powerful and can be configured with:
Convert one file, or multiple files at once. Filter files via Alfred's results with the heicjpg keyword, or use your Universal Actions hotkey. Much more versatile!
Download the HEIC to JPG workflow from the Alfred Gallery.
If you haven't experimented with Automation Tasks yet, you'll find them in Alfred's Workflows. Add an Automation Task object to your workflow to get started.
If you see "Tasks Not Installed", you'll first need to install them. We recommend checking the box to "Automatically keep Automation Tasks up to date".
Alfred's Automation Tasks have been able to interact with web browsers since their first release. They allow you to effortlessly get a list of open tabs, create new windows, interact with tabs matching a certain pattern, run JavaScript, and more.
Because different browsers require different commands for certain operations, until now, you needed to specify which browser to run an action on. While that's fine for your own workflows if you only use one browser, it requires extra steps if you wish to support multiple browsers at once.
This is why, in the 2023.3 release of Automation Tasks, we introduced the Frontmost Browser collection. It supports every Task from the other groups and adapts its behaviour to the browser which is the frontmost app.
While the previous tasks maintain their relevance because they can target specific browsers in multiple contexts, often you just want to run something on whatever browser you're working in at the moment. With the new Tasks, that becomes significantly easier.
This update also includes support for two new browsers: full support for Orion and initial support for Arc.
A few caveats apply: because Webkit browsers (Safari, Orion) do not have AppleScript hooks to open Private Windows, that functionality is disabled for them. In that same vein, Arc's AppleScript support is limited (e.g. cannot get tabs from a single window) and strays from other Chromium browsers, so current support is restricted to tasks which interact with the frontmost tab. We will continue to adapt the Automation Tasks as browsers evolve their AppleScript functionality.
Error handling has also gotten a lift: every browser Automation Task checks early if it can act on a particular browser and will show an error on the debugger if it cannot, together with an exhaustive list of every browser which supports the action.
Finally, this update brings with it general code improvements and other new tasks, including one to change the URL of the current tab and ways to strip leading and trailing arguments and lines of text.
Did you know that you can select a file, some text or a URL anywhere on your Mac or in Alfred, and perform an action instantly?
For example, you can select a file in Finder and move it to the right folder, or choose a snip of text from your browser and turn it into a new snippet in just a few keypresses.
Universal Actions are deeply integrated into Alfred, so you can trigger them from search results, File Navigation or the Clipboard Viewer. Press the right arrow to reveal the File Actions panel from any of these views.
From Finder or any other app on your Mac, you can select a file, a URL or some text and use Cmd + Alt + \ to pop up relevant actions for the item type you picked.
You can even use Alfred's File Buffer to gather a few files first before taking action on all of them at once.
Need more than the built-in actions? Many workflows also include Universal Actions as part of their features. There are currently 45+ workflows in the Gallery containing Universal Actions like image compression, file comparison, QR code generation, and much more!
Still want more? You can create your own custom actions to perform tasks tailored to your specific needs, like moving files to a specific backup, running scripts for a selected URL, or anything that can make your day easier!
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