Delay in Showing Alfred Window

There are three reasons Alfred's window may be slow to show after pressing the shortcut:

1. Search Scope needs to be adjusted

First, try setting your search scope to "Full Disk" under Features > Default Results, clicking the "Reset..." button in the bottom right of the search scope box. It's possible that macOS is offloading files to iCloud, resulting in delays returning results.

Including drives that are slow to respond to the search scope, such as external hard drives, can also result in delays in Alfred first showing or returning results. Try resetting you search scope to exclude any external drives.

If you need to search external drives, we recommend using a File Filter workflow as you can customise this to search those drives specifically.

2. Alfred Preferences not being available locally

If you're syncing your preferences, make sure they are set to always be available offline.

3. Conflicting hotkeys

Another app or service on your Mac may be using the same shortcut you configured as Alfred's primary hotkey.

If you use Cmd + Space, this guide will help you troubleshoot whether any other app/service are using the hotkey combo.

If you're using a different hotkey combo, try switching to a more obscure one temporarily to see whether the delay no longer occurs to work out whether your chosen hotkey is conflicting with another app/service.