Alfred and OS X 10.10 Yosemite | Hacker News Reader

Alfred and OS X 10.10 Yosemite

blog.alfredapp.com

153 pointscleverjake38 comments

I didn't get the point of Alfred until I tried it out. Now it feels weird to work on a machine that _doesn't_ have it installed. The workflows and the ability to (easily) add your own are what make it so great. I use this workflow dozens of times every day: https://github.com/2shortplanks/alfred-metacpan

I've had it installed for a while but never got beyond using it as an application launcher. Do you have any tutorials you'd recommend for getting into the advanced uses?

I didn't do too much research to get started, but I did find this page to be a good starting point: https://github.com/willfarrell/alfred-workflows

Loads of workflows here too: http://blog.alfredapp.com/tag/workflows/

Just look through their forum that is dedicated to sharing Workflows. It makes certain things much more convenient. http://www.alfredforum.com/forum/3-share-your-workflows/

I've been an Alfred user for the last few years.

Recently, I started using my old PC with Windows XP to play a few older games. Goodness, using the Start Button again feels so clunky, slow, and inefficient. I can't imagine why so many people made such a huge uproar about the loss of the Start button in the recent Windows when typing an application name is significantly faster and more efficient.

The Windows XP start button is not equivalent to the NT6.0/6.1 start button.

Personally, I found the Start button in Vista to be a far better app launcher than Spotlight at the time.

I'm not sure if comparing the latest in OS X productivity apps to the default installed program finder on a 13 year old operating system is a useful comparison. You may as well be comparing it to the mechanisms in Atari TOS.

Having a start button and search are not exclusive.

Also, you can also pin highly used apps to the taskbar, which is even faster than searching.

Impressive timing for a response. Wonder if they had a little birdy that tipped them off beforehand?

Probably just quick typists. Alfred (of which I'm a user) was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw a screenshot of the new Spotlight.

From what I can see, it looks like Spotlight is becoming smarter and closer to alfred than ever. It dosen't look like the dumb file finder they seem to present it to be.

Only in some ways. I doubt it will be as customisable nor the developers as responsive to feedback.

Yeah, the new Spotlight seems to be almost inspired by Alfred

This post and comments just convinced me to give Alfred a try. I always thought it was just a UI for spotlight.

Alfred is built on Spotlight in the same way that Dropbox is built on the local filesystem. It uses it for the backend, but it provides features far and above the core functionality by doing a lot more with that data than simply accessing it.

The screen shots were leaked a few hours before the keynote started. So, they might have seen it coming.

Great timely response, but unfortunately for Alfred, features in Yosemite are the only ones that I've ever used on Alfred in the first place. I suspect that for everyone with my use case, that's going to be the same. It's been about an hour, I killed Alfred and installed Yosemite. Works well, and I haven't noticed it lacking.

If you're new to alfred and are looking for some suggestions on workflows for developers I put together a pretty in-depth blog post on it (and my other developer tools) over on my blog here.

http://www.webhook.com/blog/making-the-most-of-your-mac/

I'm curious about this, alfred always just seemed like quicksilver (http://qsapp.com/) lite. Can you write alfred plugins?

Yes. They're called "workflows". http://support.alfredapp.com/workflows

The moment I saw the screenshots before the Keynote, I was like finally an Alfred replacement. However, while Spotlight now looks beautiful and very fast and still won't be a replacement for Alfred.

Opening apps and searching the file system is doesn't touch the surface of Alfred because what makes it powerful is the workflows. Just like what makes the iPhone great is the app store.

If I want to add an appointment to my calendar (Fantastical) I just type cmd + space "f Go the Movies at AMC tomorrow at 5pm" and it would automatically add it to my calendar with location and times and titles going to the proper fields all immediately without opening any apps. Or update Harvest timing tracking with a few key strokes.

I'm very surprised Apple didn't release a plugin api for Spotlight, but you can be sure they will next year at which time Alfred will slowly fade away eventually. We can all thank Alfred though for inspiring the new spotlight.

Surprised they didn't say "this validates what we are doing" like so many before them.

They don't need validation. They have a product and paying customers.

I've been using Alfred for years and I love it, but when Yosemite comes out I think I'll probably switch to Spotlight. The reason why I started using Alfred in the first place was because it was a simple and fast application launcher, and didn't have any of the complexity and bloat that Quicksilver and Launchbar had. Of course, Alfred's added power user features over the years, but I've never really had the need for many of them.

As a counterpoint to yours, I'll be sticking with Alfred. I'm sure the devs will be able to enhance Alfred with the improvement made to the underlying bits of Spotlight. I use the custom workflow all the time as well as the ability to customise searches.

In addition, from what I saw in the demo, I don't want suggestions from the iTunes Store popping up at any time.

What really got me hooked on using Alfred was the dash workflow...offline api docs at the touch of a keystroke..

Although the new Spotlight looks amazing, Alfred does things it'll never do and until Apple allows custom workflows and that, I'll be and Alfred user for ever.

Too bad the new Spotlight doesn't have a clipboard manager as well. That's the main reason I paid for the Alfred powerpack.

Nice and quick response to Apple... Hopefully they won't (cough) patent it...

Sherlocked again.

Glad to hear. Alfred is a lifesaver.

There is iSkype, iWhatsApp, iPaint, iChina, iApplause.

So is the new naming scheme after national parks, or Warner Brothers cartoon characters? Will the next one be Yellowstone, or Sylvester?

I suppose it would be tacky to name the next release "Bugs".

It's California locations. 10.9 Mavericks was the first in the new naming scheme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavericks_(location)

Ah. Shows how much I care.

Sometimes, it's better to be funny than right. Sometimes.

Pity you couldn't even do funny right.

I do funny just fine. Pity HN has such a lousy sense of humor. Really funny comments get downvoted all the time here for being "unproductive" or some silly crap like that.

But hey, if all you want to do is get karma, just post a bland reinforcement of the conventional wisdom. Works like a charm.

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