Alfred’s Best Workflows to Optimize Your Mac Usage
If you’re the type of Mac user who never takes their hands off the keyboard, an application launcher like Alfred can be your best friend.
Alfred runs in the background of your computer, appearing when you invoke him with a keyboard shortcut. From there, you just start typing and your results are displayed in real time – whether you find applications or files, perform calculations, search for word definitions, view your clipboard history, look for contact information, or any number of other handy functionality. The beauty of app launcher apps like Alfred is that everything you normally need is just a few keystrokes away.
Alfred’s core features are free, but the real magic of the app lies in its workflows, custom triggers that are only available with the purchase of a Powerpack license. Powerpacks start at around $ 25 for an individual user license, or $ 38 for a family license that covers the latest software, or $ 45 for one “Mega Supporter,” which gives you free lifetime upgrades.
Packal has hundreds of user-created Alfred workflows. To get started, here are some of our favorites:
Search through Alfred
Whether you stick with Google, prefer Bing, or are a privacy-focused DuckDuckGo adherent, Alfred makes it easy to search the web with your favorite engine. (This is Alfred’s built-in function, but it is one of my most used functions, so we will refer to it as a “workflow”.)
Call Alfred using the default hotkey ( ⌘ + Space ), enter the name of the search engine you are using, and then enter your search terms.
For example, typing “Google Lifehacker” and then pressing Enter launches your default browser and displays Google search results for that word. Alfred also recognizes when you want to search a specific site. So by typing “Google lifehacker.com: Alfred” you will see links from that particular site (Lifehacker) that include your keywords (Alfred).
You can also customize Alfred’s web search options. Dive into Alfred’s settings by hitting CMD +, the keyboard shortcut, choosing Features, and then hitting Search the Web. Here you can edit keywords for different sites, enable or disable site search, and add your own search terms. The latter is especially convenient.
For those times when you want to search for something on a site like Amazon or eBay, for example. Just enter “Amazon [product name]” and Alfred will take you directly to the site with already open results.
For more information on editing Alfred’s search parameters, we have a complete beginner’s guide to Alfred .
Quick access to your iTunes library
The iTunes interface is cumbersome to say the least. Instead, use Alfred to interact with your music library through its sleek mini-player, eliminating the need to deal with the clunky iTunes interface.
You can access your MP3s through Alfred by following these steps:
- Use CTRL + ⌘ + Enter to open Alfred’s iTunes Mini Player.
- Select a category: Genre, Artists, Albums or Playlists.
- If you don’t know what you want, select the “Random Alfred Album” option.
- You can navigate to any category using the arrow keys or by entering what you want.
- Find the song or album you want to listen to and press Enter to start playback.
Again, this is another built-in feature of Alfred, but we’ll treat it as a “workflow” as it makes your life so much easier.
Alfred Spotify Mini Player
If you’d rather avoid iTunes entirely, consider the Alfred Spotify Mini Player workflow .
With Alfred Spotify Mini Player, you will have control over your entire Spotify library without ever diving into the downloaded Spotify app. It does take some tweaking, but it saves you time.
By setting up this workflow, you have complete control over all your playlists right in Alfred. This means viewing, launching, tracking, and deleting playlists from your library. You will be able to add or remove tracks and albums as needed, and search both your own library and the larger Spotify collection.
This workflow is pretty flexible in terms of what you can do with your Spotify account (both free and premium), and it also supports switching between multiple accounts. For complete instructions on how to set up your Spotify Mini Player workflow, see this guide .
In short, you need to download the workflow file and then double-click or drag and drop it on Alfred to open and install. You will then need to create an app on the Spotify website itself, which you can do regardless of whether you are a free or premium user. It’s a bit of a tricky process, but if you follow the previously mentioned tutorial, you’ll get started right away.
Google Maps Directions
Aptly named Google Maps Directions , this simple workflow makes it easy to get Google Maps directions from your current location to wherever you want. Download and install the workflow in Alfred by double-clicking the file or dragging and dropping it into Alfred himself.
Then you can type “go2” or “directions” for Alfred, then the address of the place you want to go to and press Enter. Alfred launches your default browser and opens Google Maps with directions and directions loaded for you.
If you want to change the keywords that activate this workflow, just launch Alfred, go to Settings (CMD +,), then Workflows, find Directions, and double-click the Keyword step. Then change “go2” or “routes” to whatever keywords you like.
Search by mail
For Apple Mail users, the Mail.app Search workflow lets you quickly search for specific messages instead of wasting time browsing your inbox and other folders.
Once you install this tiny workflow (download it here , then double-click or drag and drop the file into Alfred), you can search for specific emails directly from Alfred. This workflow lets you search by:
- Sender’s name and email address (“emfrom”)
- Subject line and email content (“em”)
- Subject only (“emsubj”)
- Email attachments (“ema”)
The results appear as you type, and pressing Enter / Return on the desired message opens it in a new Mail pop-up window. If you don’t use Apple Mail or prefer Gmail, there is also a Gmail client for Alfred . Just download it, double click or drag and drop it into Alfred to install and set up your own hotkey. It will ask you to log into your Gmail account in your default browser, and once you authenticate your account, you can access your Gmail account right in Alfred.
Strong password
In our days the password reliable protection is important, and workflow StrongPassword gives you the ability to generate secure random passwords directly in Alfred.
After you download and install StrongPassword in Alfred (double-click the file or drag and drop it into Alfred), you will have to change the defaults a bit. You may even need to update your workflow as it uses multiple sources to generate passwords. Sources include GRC for generating 63 character extra long passwords or random.org for 24 character passwords .
To invoke StrongPassword in Alfred, simply type “sp.” Then you can create a password using all possible characters or omitting special characters. By default, generated passwords are 64 characters long, whether you need special characters or not.
If you need to shorten this a bit, you need to do the following:
- Open Alfred’s settings.
- Click the Workflows section and find StrongPassword in the sidebar.
- Double-click the Script Filter and Run Script sections of the workflow.
- Change the number “64” to whatever number of digits you want to use, for example “20”.
Each time you start the StrongPassword workflow, it takes a few minutes to get the randomized password because different sources are used to generate it. After the workflow has created your ultra-secure password, it is automatically copied to the clipboard so you can quickly paste it into the prompt.
Search OmniFocus
OmniFocus is a powerful task management app worth trying. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of the app is that you cannot search all at once – you are limited by your current Perspective or selection. Fortunately, Alfred’s Search OmniFocus workflow provides a solution.
Once you download and install it by double-clicking or dragging and dropping the file into Alfred, you can search OmniFocus right from Alfred.
- Typing .s lets you search for all tasks in OmniFocus, regardless of status.
- Enter .i to just search your inbox
- Enter .p to search for projects
- Enter .c to search for a specific context or .lc to list all contexts.
- For specific perspectives, enter .v or list all perspectives with .lv.
- Enter .f to search folders or list all folders with .lf
- Get narrower results by looking for active tasks with .sa or active projects with .pa
As with other workflows, you can edit any of these keywords by going into Alfred’s Preferences, going to Workflows, choosing Search OmniFocus, and choosing an OmniFocus workflow.
Search Safari History
Have you ever tried to find a specific link in the Safari browser history? You can open a browser and search it if necessary, but you can also simply run Alfred’s quick search to quickly find what you are looking for.
Set up a Safari History Search workflow with a suitable name and enter “hsi” and then enter whatever you’re looking for in Alfred. slugs.