alfred 4.0.2
Search–based tool extending to automation
Free (IAPs) From Running with Crayons, alfredapp.com Needs macOS 10.11 or later Much of the Finder is about searching: wouldn’t you like a perfect English butler to assist that for free? It’s what Alfred aims to do, and version 4 brings many improvements, above all to suit Catalina’s new security.
At its most basic, Alfred replaces Spotlight for local and web searches, acting as a better Finder driven largely from your keyboard. This now has dynamic sorting of items by name or date at the click of a pop–up, and fine thumbnails. Like other powerful assistants, Alfred has extensive preferences and options, now redesigned and searchable — there’s also full Dark Mode support.
It brings some amazing shortcuts. To open your last–used image in Preview, type P for the app to appear as top hit, right–cursor for Recent Documents, right–cursor again to list them, and a third right–cursor opens the most recently accessed file: just four keystrokes. Specialized web searches are similarly instant: “twitter @MacLife WWDC” takes you straight to Mac|Life’s tweets for the WWDC. Alfred updates search results according to your usage: if you keep selecting hits from one source, that gets top billing.
The free version of Alfred is great to see if you get on with him, but he only really opens up when you buy the Powerpack and unlock features such as script–based workflows, snippets, and clipboard control. Ready–made workflows support Twitter, Evernote, Fantastical, Slack, Google and Apple Maps, and others from an active community.
Developing workflows uses visual programming which feels familiar if you’ve used Automator. Version 4 brings major improvements here with a great workflow debugger, including logs with interactive navigation. Other additions include Rich Text in snippets with the keyword !rich, which retain full styling when pasted in. These extend with dynamic placeholders to transform content on the fly, such as changing the case of text in the clipboard.
Alfred has his limits. You can share his settings via iCloud, but DropBox is more reliable. A companion iOS app Alfred Remote uses Wi–Fi to run remote workflows like controlling iTunes. the bottom lINe. This is an infinitely flexible keyboard–driven replacement for much of Finder, Spotlight, and more.