How to set up Alfred 5 for extreme productivity
Table of Contents
Alfred is one of the must-have tools installed on any Mac that I use literally every few minutes. It has amazing features and functionality built in and it is extremely customizable. At first, you can use it to replace your default Spotlight (cmd + spacebar) – I’ve found its search to be really intuitive, easy, and fast. Some of the things I do with it are:
- save and access clipboard history to easily paste things already copied
- find and open applications
- search for files on the laptop
- open that file in finder
- open the location of that file in terminal
- Google search (which then opens a new tab in the browser)
- quick calculations
- tell Google Assistant to turn lights on / off
- control playback of songs from YouTube music
- find and directly navigate to issues / MRs in Gitlab
- auto-complete canned text snippets (like email addresses, domain names, etc.)
The free version of Alfred is useful by itself, but its real power comes when you add custom workflows. A single license is ~$41 for life or ~$72 for lifetime upgrades – both are super reasonable.
Install and get started #
You can download it directly from the Alfred homepage or by using Homebrew: brew install --cask alfred
There is a great getting started guide already available on the Alfred website – feel free to check that out and then come back here for additional customization.
Configure it #
General #
Pre-requisite: Remove keyboard shortcut for Spotlight. If you followed my New Mac Setup post, it should already be done. If not, open System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Spotlight
- UNCHECK Show Spotlight search
Starup: Launch Alfred at login - ON Alfred Hotkey: ⌘ + Space
Features #
File Search #
Navigation
- Shortcuts: ALL ON
Web Search
- For each search engine you use, change the keyword to something shorter. Here are mine:
- google >
g
- images >
gi
- maps >
gm
- translate >
gt
- gmail (search) >
gml
- drive (search) >
gd
- wiki >
w
- amazon >
a
- linkedin >
li
- youtube >
y
- google >
Clipboard History
-
History
- Clipboard History: ALL ON
- Viewer Keyword: cb
- Clear Keyword: cls
-
Merging
- Fast append selected text: ON
Snippets
Automatically expand snippets by keyword: ON
Here you can add various text snippets which, when you type them, will be replaced with something else. I use these a lot to help speed up entering email addresses, or other text which I use a lot. Here are some of mine:
Name | Keyword | Snippet |
---|---|---|
cmd | cmd | ⌘ |
@@pwc | @@pwc | [email protected] |
@@gcp | @@gcp | [email protected] |
@@dude | @@dude | [email protected] |
@mailinator.com | ||
rshmhrj.io | @@rio | rshmhrj.io |
[email protected] | @@rim | [email protected] |
1Password Pre-requisites Download the 1Password CLI and link it to the 1Password app.
- If you followed the New Mac Setup post, you should already have it.
- If not install both 1Password and 1Password CLI with Homebrew:
brew install --cask 1password 1password-cli
- Validate install with
op -v
- Link the CLI to the app:
- In the 1Password app (after logging in), go to All Accounts > Preferences:
- Security > Unclock > Touch ID – TURN ON
- Developer > Command-Line Interface (CLI) > Connect with 1Password CLI – TURN ON
- Lock 1Password and unlock it
- In the 1Password app (after logging in), go to All Accounts > Preferences:
In Alfred
- Add the 1Password 8 Integration Workflow.
- Download it from github. In Alfred, open the Workflows section and drag the
1Password.alfredworkflow
file into the dark purple area. - Click install
- After install
⌘ + space
>1p
> Sign in to update items - Unlock the Touch ID prompts
Now you should have two options to search 1Password entries:
- ⌘ + shift + space
, default 1Password quick access search
- ⌘ + space
> 1p
> search entries
Workflows #
Search for and install workflows. There are some starter ones suggested by Alfred here. Most of the ones I have installed are from Packal.
For each: download, drag the .alfredworkflow
file into the workflows section in Alfred and install it, and then configure / test it.
You can directly download all the workflows I have installed here.
Appearance #
- I normally use the
Alfred Dark
theme - Options (at the bottom of the screen)
- How he looks:
- Hide menu bar icon - ON
- Show Alfred on: active screen
- How he looks:
Remote #
I don’t have an iOS device, so haven’t used this feature