Smart groups: compound statements not working

Has anybody else had trouble with this?

I create a new smart group in the normal way, with Kind = “Any Document” as the first condition. I want to add the equivalent of the OR statement (Name contains X OR Tag is Y). Obviously I need a nested condition for this.

In the editor, I use option-click: the + icon changes to as you’d expect.

But the resulting condition isn’t nested and I don’t get the All/Any of the following are true line.

So in effect, opt-clicking + has exactly the same effect as just clicking on it.

I’ve done this successfully in the past, but now, I can’t even add compound statements to a smart group which already includes them, so either I’m missing something obvious, or there’s something wrong… As a workround, I’ve just duplicated a previous search and changed the parameters – the search functions as you’d expect. It’s just I can’t create a new one.

Version: 2.9.7 on macOS Sierra 10.12.1.

Thanks for any help.

Option-clicking to add compound predicates is still working on 2.9.7 on 10.11.6 – so perhaps this is only a Sierra issue?

Works fine on 10.12.1 here, so perhaps try rebooting will help (assuming that hasn’t already be done).

Thanks Korm and Greg. The behaviour persists over a reboot. I’ll try reinstalling and if that doesn’t work I’ll report it as a bug.

Solved it…

Turns out that it was Karabiner Elements (a keyboard enhancer) bizarrely somehow remapping opt to opt-enough-to-do-everything-perfectly-except-this-one-thing.

I thought I’d uninstalled everything from Karabiner weeks ago, but it was still there, lurking under an assumed name deep in /Library. Removing those vestiges and rebooting solved the problem.

BTW, Karabiner is wonderful – I used it to remap the

  • caps lock key to Single Press = esc, Hold down = control
  • return key to Single Press = return, Hold down = control
  • both shift keys together = Caps lock

These are incredibly useful keybindings, but unfortunately Sierra broke Karabiner. The replacement, Karabiner Elements, is still very basic and can’t do this double assignment, which is a shame. If you haven’t upgraded to Sierra, then Karabiner is well worth investigating.