- Created by pyrho
- 🗓 Last Updated: 10/12/22 18:27:02
- 🌟 Stars on GitHub: 12
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From their README
2020-10-06: You're really better off using this workflow instead
Alfred Firefox Tab switcher
An Alfred workflow to quickly switch between firefox tabs.
Installation
Requirements
- nodeJS (tested with version 13.7)
- Node Package Manager (npm) (usually installed alongside nodeJS)
- Alfred + Powerpack License
1. Install the workflow
You need to install the workflow first as it will also install the native messaging host component of the extension (required before the extension is started).
mkdir -p "~/Library/Application Support/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts/"
npm install -g alfred-firefoxtabswitch
The workflow will register automatically with Alfred, and the
Native Manifest
will be written automatically upon install at /Library/Application Support/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts/alfredtabswitch.json
2. Install the Firefox extension
Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/alfred-tab-switch/ and install it from there.
Usage
Invoke the workflow with fw
(you can customize that in Alfred), all opened
tabs (across all windows) will be shown.
If more than one argument is supplied to the workflow, all arguments must be present in either the title or the URL.
Then simply hit ENTER on the tab you want to focus.
Similar
I only discovered the existence of a pre-existing workflow by the legendary @deanishe after doing all of this ... Yeah I know.
While my one focused on tab switching only, the other one is much more featureful; so give that a try if you need more.
Architecture
┌───────────┐
│ Alfred │
└───────────┘
▲
╭──────────────╮ │
│ ◎ ○ ○ ░░░░░░░│ │
├──────────────┤ ┌─────┴─────┐
│ │ │UDP socket │
│ │ └─────┬─────┘
│ │ │
│ ┌──────┴─────┐ ▼
└───────┤ Extension ├───────────────────────────┐
└──────────┬─┘ Native Messaging Host │
└─────────────────────────────┘
The firefox extension will automatically spawn the native messaging host at startup.
The host will open an UDP socket on port 52547
and listen for incoming
connections.
Alfred interacts with Firefox via the UDP socket, querying for the list of tabs,
and commanding to switch to a given tab. These inteactions are handled by the
./host/client.js
file (spawned by alfred).
Each time the user issues a command, Alfred will spawn an instance of
host/client.js
, which will talk to the UDP socket and kill itself when the
result is returned.
If the native messaging host fails to reply within 1 second, the client will kill itself.
Why so complex?
Other workflows use Apple Script to switch tabs for Safari, Chrome etc.
But Firefox does not expose its tabs to the system, so the only way is to use an extension with an native messaging component that allows alfred to communicate with firefox.
Troubleshooting
If shit ain't working, check the following (in that order):
Check the native message host manifest
❯ cat ~/Library/Application Support/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts/alfredtabswitch.json
{
"name": "alfredtabswitch",
"description": "A Native Messaging host that enables quickly switching between tabs using Alfred",
"path": "/usr/local/lib/node_modules/alfred-firefoxtabswitch/host/app.js",
"type": "stdio",
"allowed_extensions": [
"[email protected]"
]
}
Check that the native messaging host is started by Firefox
Find the PID of the native messaging host process.
❯ lsof -i UDP:52547 # 52547 is the port used by our UDP socket.
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
node 13578 pyrho 56u IPv4 0xef6cec813ce54835 0t0 UDP localhost:52547
Confirm with pstree that this is indeed a process spawned by firefox
❯ pstree -g3 -p 13578 # -p `PID`, we got the PID from the command above
─┬= 00001 root /sbin/launchd
└─┬= 13534 pyrho /Applications/Firefox Developer Edition.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox
└─── 13578 pyrho /usr/local/bin/node /usr/local/lib/node_modules/alfred-firefoxtabswitch/host/app.js /Users/pyrho/Library/Application Support/Moz
If you have a similar output, the issue is elsewhere.
Open the extension debugger
Open firefox and go to about:devtools-toolbox?type=extension&id=alfredtabswitch%4025.wf
check the console and see if there is any error messages.
Try the client manually
Go to /usr/local/lib/node_modules/alfred-firefoxtabswitch/host
and run ❯ node client.js get
, you should be greeted
with a JSON object representing the list of tabs:
{
"items": [
{
"title": "Purify - Functional programming library for TypeScript",
"subtitle": "https://gigobyte.github.io/purify/adts/Maybe",
"arg": "0:3"
}
]
}
Enable native messaging host debug logs
Go to /usr/local/lib/node_modules/alfred-firefoxtabswitch/host
, and edit he
utils.js
file to uncomment the line with the appendFileSync
This will log some information to the specified file.
Do not try to launch the host (app.js) manually, that is not how native messaging works (well you can, but it won't really do anything).