"Hook not responding" after files moved [Big Sur]

Bug Reports
1

When I invoke the “Browse Hook Bookmarks” action in Launchbar. Launchbar freezes and eventually throws this error up after a few minutes:

“An error occurred while running “Browse Hook Bookmarks”
The operation couldn’t be completed. /Users/XXXXX/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Actions/Browse Hook Bookmarks 2.lbaction/Contents/Scripts/default.scpt: execution error: Hook got an error: AppleEvent timed out. (-1712)”

The Activity Monitor now shows in red “Hook (Not Responding)”. And does not resolve after an hour.

I had moved a large number of files from the system drive to another internal hard drive. Many of which have hooks.

Similar beach ball lockups occurred on individual hook links from my previously faultless NotePlan 3 markdown links.

So I then used instead Hook’s internal search function and clickied on what Hook finds (very slowly). These individual slowpokes seem to eventually resolve. I am still testing them via the Hook search to see if this is a consistent behavior.

FYI: according to Hook there are some 263 Hook bookmarks on my machine.

Question: previous relocation of one or a small number of files have not caused this behavior. Maybe a slight delay while Hook “relocates” these few links.

Does this mean that moving a large number of files with Hooks is something that breaks Hook because it is too much material for Hook to update a large number of existing links with the new location?

TIA

P.S. Big Sur 11.2.3 and Hook 2.2.2 Launchbar 6.14.1

2

moving files is not a problem. If the files are moved to a volume that is not indexed by Spotlight, then in some conditions Hook may lose track of them. Ensuring Spotlight indexes them should fix the problem.

However, Hook should not become unresponsive based on movement of files.

Are you running a 2020 version of Timing? It had an AppleScript issue that could beachball AppleScript (nothing to do with Hook, except that Hook does use AppleScript so it was an incidental casualty).

3

I am running this version of Timing: Version 2021.3.2 (288)

This seems to be sorting itself out over time. Some hook links just spin the ball for a few minutes and then work as usual thereafter.

4

If you would please launch Activity Monitor, sort processes by CPU usage, take a screenshot of the top processes there, and capture a “Spin Dump” (… button in toolbar), compress the result and send it to us as a PM or email (not in a public topic such as this), we should be able to isolate what is happening. My guess is that there is a process on your Mac that is blocking AppleScript, and Hook is getting caught up with that, but the Spin Dump will give us a better idea.

also what do you mean by “large number of files”? thousands? 10’s of thousands?

Hook 3.0 will contain a 5s time-out so that it does not block / get blocked.

thanks for this.