Supported versions

Alfred-PyWorkflow supports all versions of Alfred 4 & 5. It works with Python 3.7 and does not support Python 2 any longer.

Some features are not available on older versions of macOS.

Alfred versions

Alfred-PyWorkflow works with all versions of Alfred 4 & 5, but you must own the Powerpack to use Alfred’s workflow feature.

All Script Filter features provided by Alfred 2 as of v2.8.3 and by Alfred 4 as of v4.0.9 are supported in the latest version of Alfred-PyWorkflow.

The Workflow class is compatible with Alfred 3+.

Important

Versions 3.4.1 altered the way workflow variables are set via Script Filter feedback, and Workflow as of version 1.27 of Alfred-PyWorkflow uses the new mechanism.

As a result, versions 1.27+ of Alfred-PyWorkflow are not compatible with versions of Alfred older than 3.4.1.

Workflow uses the JSON feedback format in Alfred 3+. It supports workflow variables and more advanced modifiers than Workflow/Alfred 3+.

macOS versions

Warning

Versions of macOS before High Sierra have an extremely old version of OpenSSL, which is not compatible with many servers’ SSL configurations, including GitHub’s. workflow.web cannot connect to these servers, which also means that the update mechanism does not work on macOS 10.12/Sierra and older.

Alfred-PyWorkflow supports the same macOS versions as Alfred, namely 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and later (Alfred 3 is 10.9+ only).

Note

Notifications, added in version 1.15 of Alfred-PyWorkflow, are only available on Mountain Lion (10.8) and above.

Python versions

Alfred-PyWorkflow only officially supports the system Pythons that come with macOS (i.e. /usr/bin/python), which is 2.6 on 10.6/Snow Leopard and 2.7 on later versions.

Important

Other Pythons (e.g. Homebrew, conda, pyenv etc.) are not supported.

This is a deliberate design choice, so please do not submit feature requests for support of, or bug reports concerning issues with any non-system Pythons.

This includes Python 3.

Python 3 support will be added in a new major version of the library when Catalina is more popular.

Here is the full list of new features in Python 3.7, but the most important things if you want your workflow to run on Snow Leopard/Python 2.6 are:

• argparse is not available in 2.6. Use getopt or include argparse in your workflow. Personally, I’m a big fan of docopt for parsing command-line arguments, but argparse is better for certain use cases.

• You must specify field numbers for str.format(), i.e. '{0}.{1}'.format(first, second) not just '{}.{}'.format(first, second).

• No Counter or OrderedDict in collections.

• No dictionary views in 2.6.

• No set literals.

• No dictionary or set comprehensions.

Python 2.6 is still included in later versions of macOS (up to and including El Capitan), so run your Python scripts with /usr/bin/python2.6 in addition to /usr/bin/python (2.7) to make sure they will run on Snow Leopard.

Why no Python 3 support?

Alfred-PyWorkflow is targeted at the system Python on macOS. Its goal is to enable developers to build workflows that will “just work” for users on any vanilla installation of macOS since Snow Leopard.

As such, it strongly discourages developers from requiring users of their workflows to bugger about with their OS in order to get a workflow to work. This naturally includes requiring the installation of some non-default Python.

Version 2 of Alfred-PyWorkflow, which will be a complete rewrite, will support Python 3 and Alfred 4+ only.