HOW TO WORK SMARTER WITH ALFRED 4

Set up privacy lists

If you’re using macOS Mojave, follow the instructions to allow Alfred to access protected data such as your Contacts, Accessibility, and Full Disk Access. Click on the button to restart the app for those settings to stick.

open its commands

With Preview at the top, press the right cursor key. Alfred then shows available commands, with Recent Documents… at the top. To open that list of recent documents, press the right cursor key a second time.

Search for tweets

Type “twitter” into Alfred. You’ll see a Search Twitter “…” window, asking you to enter a search term in quotation marks. Enter “WWDC” and press Return. You can refine this by user with “twitter @maclife ‘WWDC’”, for example.

Set up Search Scope

Open Alfred’s Prefs, and select Default Results in Features. Check the folders in its Search Scope, as these limit where it looks for apps, files and metadata. Drop any additions in from the Finder.

open the document

The last–opened document is now at the top. To open that, press the right cursor key a third time. To access another document instead, use the Up or Down arrow keys before choosing it with the Right arrow key or Return.

Set up Web search

Open Alfred’s Preferences, select Features then Web Search. Click Add Custom Search, then enter the URL of the site and click on Lookup. If OpenSearch or SearchAction is available, click Use to set the action up.

Locate a recent app

Open Alfred from the menu bar icon or its shortcut. Start typing the name of an app which has recently been open, such as Preview. You should only need one or two characters before it reaches the top of the list.

Browse documents

Type “~” to open your Home folder, “pi” for Pictures, then press the Right arrow key twice for folders in that. Select a folder and press right cursor twice to browse. Change the sort order from the pop–up menu (bottom right).

Test your search

Provide a unique Keyword to trigger the search in Alfred. Then enter a suitable term to validate the search, and click on the Test button to check it works. Click on Save to add your new custom search to Alfred.