Return to Alfred

Some software and tools do come and go all the time. Sometimes they return and make a second, or even third appearance in /Applications. After using Alfred.app for years, reduced down in its feature set to only opening applications, I ditched it for macOS’ built-in Spotlight search, which worked just as well.

With the upgrade to macOS Monterey, Spotlight somehow became so slow, that it’s not convenient anymore. After pressing cmd + space bar and starting to type the application name, the first result quickly shows, but disappears as quickly again. After that it takes a few seconds for the results list to show up. Most of the time, the first result is the correct one, but in cases where it’s not, it is an interruption to my workflow.

So today, I went back to using Alfred, which instantly displays a full list of results, much faster than Spotlight. Let’s see if I’ll also make use of some of the other features that come with it more often than before.

It seems that Spotlight isn’t caching anything, which I think it should. I rebuilt the Spotlight index already, which did not make any difference. If you have any pointers on how to speed it up again, please let me know.