[Bug]: Catalog items incorrectly showing as empty, requiring manual rescanning

[siracusa]

Before submitting your bug report, please confirm you have completed the following steps

• Searched the issue is not already listed in the Issue List (I've searched it)
• Searched in the Quicksilver Users' Group for questions relating to tech support.
• Downloaded the latest version of Quicksilver for your system and confirmed the issue still persists.

Bug description

For the past several months, Quicksilver sometimes decides not to scan many of the items in the Catalog. It usually manifests like this:

1. Log in to an account that has Quicksilver configured to launch on login.
2. Some time later, activate Quicksilver and type something (e.g., "Calc…") to try to launch an app.
3. Be surprised when Quicksilver does not offer a match for what you typed, even after you type out the whole thing ("Calculator") and hit the down arrow to look through all possible matches.
4. Open Quicksilver preferences and look in the Catalog tab. Notice that the Catalog items where you expected to find the desired app (e.g., items in the Applications section of the Catalog) have no numbers next to them, indicating that they have found no items.
5. Select each item in the Catalog and then click the "Rescan source" spinning-arrow button in the lower-right corner of the window. Notice that it suddenly finds many items, adding a number in a gray pill-shaped badge next to the Catalog item.
6. Repeat for every item in the Catalog that has no number-in-a-pill next to it.
7. Now, finally, Quicksilver can find the expected items.

I tried changing the "Rescan" setting to every possible choice ("Manually," "Every day," "Every 10 minutes," etc.) with no change in behavior.

I think sometimes it even reverts to having no items in many of its Catalog entries even after I've manually fixed it!

Needless to say, this is making Quicksilver quite frustrating to use.

Steps to reproduce

1. Log in to an account that has Quicksilver configured to launch on login.
2. Some time later, activate Quicksilver and type something (e.g., "Calc…") to try to launch an app.

Expected behavior

The desired app (e.g., Calculator) is found.

MacOS Version

macOS 14.5 (23F79) (But it has been happening for months on earlier versions of Sonoma.)

Quicksilver Version

2.4.2 (4041)

Relevant Plugins

No response

Crash Logs or Spindump

No response

Screenshots

No response

Additional info

No response

[n8henrie]

Thanks for the report -- there are other similar reports and this is a priority bug, I've just been tied up trying to sort out the crashes in QSProcessMonitor first.

Will try to hunt this down as soon as I can!

[n8henrie]

I'm not currently able to reproduce this, either with a debug build from master or with the 2.4.2 release. All my catalog entries either have a pill with the expected number of entries (or at least the number remains the same after a manual rescan) or if they are missing a pill, there is still none after a rescan (suggesting it is truly empty).

It makes me wonder:

• Could your ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Catalog.plist have become corrupted somehow?
  • Consider shutting down QS, renaming this file, restart, and see if behavior changes -- especially WRT catalog items that should be indexed by default (e.g. your example of Calculator.app)
• Perhaps your catalog is not actually being scanned / rescanned for some reason?
  • defaults read com.blacktree.Quicksilver QSCatalogRescanFrequency should give you some meaningful info to make sure the value is getting updated
    • The default of 10 minutes gives a missing value
    • Manually gives a -1
  • If you run the Force Catalog Rescan action (via QS), does manually rescanning everything in this way pick up the missing items?

[siracusa]

I'll try these fixes when I get back to my Mac, but I will note that I'm seeing this on two different user accounts on two different Macs.

[n8henrie]

configured to launch on login

I notice you specify this (twice) -- if you do not have it launch at login, but instead manually start QS, do you see the same behavior? Just curious.

[siracusa]

OK, I'm finally back at my Mac. I removed my Catalog.plist file and the app created a new one, which I've populated. My com.blacktree.Quicksilver QSCatalogRescanFrequency is currently set to 1440. I'll let you know if I see the problem again.

[siracusa]

I just restarted my Mac, and I saw the problem again. This is after entirely deleting my Catalog.plist file, as noted above. Here's a screenshot of my catalog with missing numbers next to catalog items just after logging in.

I will now change Quicksilver to not launch on login to see if that has any effect.

[punkhop]

Same for me with #3006. Custom catalog requiring re-scan after each system reboot.

[siracusa]

Here's a recent crash log that seemingly happened during a catalog scan.
quicksilver-scanning-crash.txt

[n8henrie]

@siracusa Interesting, thank you for the crash log. I assume that the whole of QS crashed (not just some kind of silent crash of a background thread)?

[siracusa]

Yes, Quicksilver was no longer running after that crash.

[siracusa]

Here's another crash that may or may not be related to the earlier one. As before, Quicksilver is no longer running after this crash.
quicksilver-crash-2.txt

[siracusa]

I will now change Quicksilver to not launch on login to see if that has any effect.

I manually launched Quicksilver shortly after logging in, and I saw the same bug: items in the Catalog with no numbers next to them. I had to manually scan them to get the expected items into the Catalog and available in Quicksilver.

[punkhop]

I installed the debug version. It's now crashing on startup half the time, and needing manual rescan the other half. How do I send the crashlog you need?

[n8henrie]

Posting them in this thread would be great.

[punkhop]

Are these the right logs?
qslogs.zip

[punkhop]

Crashing every startup, and also asking for Accessibility every time, even though it has permission.

[n8henrie]

For the accessibility issue, you likely need to remove QS from accessibility permissions and then re-add it.

[punkhop]

Have done that a bunch of times.

[n8henrie]

@punkhop -- I'm not sure why the debug version is crashing on startup. Based on those crash logs, it's a separate issue.

Would you please:

1. start a separate issue
2. attach those crash logs
3. Try starting Quicksilver from Terminal.app with the QSDebugStartup flag and post your results:

$ QSDebugStartup=1 /path/to/Quicksilver.app/Contents/MacOS/Quicksilver

[punkhop]

Any update on this, or the debug version crashing issue?

[punkhop]

@n8henrie ? Been fighting with this for ~6 months and haven't been able to use QS at all. Crashing on startup, required manually rescan, etc.

[n8henrie]

@punkhop -- Sorry, in the middle of moving the family. Likely to have more time to work on QS in Jan 2025.

Pull requests and contributions would be accepted (with gratitude). See also: #2990 (comment)