How to be a Mac Power User with Alfred
Alfred is an application for Mac that allows you to quickly launch applications, execute workflows and expand text (among many other things). All these custom actions can be executed from your keyboard, which is usually much faster than using your mouse or trackpad.
I’ve been using Alfred for over a year now after hearing about it on a podcast. I use the app to access my favourite websites, search the web, create calendar events, and many other things. Alfred is similar to the native macOS Spotlight, except much faster and more feature-rich. The results returned by Alfred are also smarter than Spotlight since it prioritizes content that you visit most frequently.
Launch Alfred
You’re able to open the Alfred search box by pressing a specific combination of keys (called a hotkey). Your hotkey can be customized in the Alfred preferences. In my case, I’m using ⌘ + space to launch Alfred. Since ⌘ + space is the same hotkey used to launch Spotlight, I had to disable the default Spotlight keyboard shortcut by going to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts.
Open apps
Alfred is likely most often used by its users to open Mac applications. All you’ve got to do to open an app is to launch Alfred and start typing the name of your application. Often times, you only need to type the first 2 characters of your application’s name before the correct result appears for you.
Open websites
You can quickly open your favourite websites using a keyword of your choice. Some of the websites I’ve setup to be launched with Alfred include (LinkedIn, Medium, Github, and Google Photos.
Search the web
Alfred can also be setup to search specific websites using your own queries. For example, you can do a Google search within Alfred or search Amazon for a product you want to buy. One search I find myself doing quite often is to look up different movie ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
Search your files
You can of course search for files on your Mac using Alfred. I use this all the time to locate a file quickly on my Mac. No more hunting through folders in your finder. The file search is also much faster to gather results than Spotlight. After using Alfred for a while and trying Spotlight recently, the increased delay with Spotlight returning search results is evident.
Alfred also lists your returned results in order of how frequent you use a particular file, app, or website. This means that you can usually hit Enter to accept the first search result returned to you (usually even before you need to type the full name of your desired result).
Alfred has additional features that are available when you purchase the Alfred Powerpack. I’ve purchased the Powerpack and I take advantage of its text expansion and workflow features.
Text expansion
Text expansion is great for quickly typing out frequently used word snippets, symbols, and even emojis (download the emoji text expansion pack for Alfred here). I use text expansion to print out emojis (👍, 😄, 😠), my home address, email, and special keyboard symbols (⌘, ⌥, ⇧).
Workflows
Workflows allow you to connect Alfred to some of your favourite Mac apps and launch a series of tasks through a simple command or hotkey. I’ve currently got 4 workflows that I use with Alfred, but there are a ton more that you can choose from. You can also create your own custom workflows.
One of the workflows I use allows me to create new calendar events in Fantastical. Since Fantastical has great natural language processing, it’s very easy to create a new event in my calendar using Alfred. You can download the Fantastical workflow on Github.
Another neat workflow is the ability to quickly adjust your screen brightness. All you need to do is type brightness followed by the percentage brightness you want to achieve. Download this workflow on Packal.
Those are some of the Alfred features I take advantage of to make my daily tasks a bit more efficient. If you’ve got any cool Alfred workflows you use, please feel free to share in the comments.
