We all have a favorite corner of the Web, such as Reddit, Hacker News, NeoGaf, and of course, TNW. Together, they actually make Google Drive more useful than some of the alternatives on the market, such as Dropbox or SkyDrive, because it’s now so much easier to look up the files that I need. I imagine Gmail is a more widely adopted service than Google Drive, but to my surprise, the integration with Alfred has made me use Google’s online storage service even more. Google Drive works the same way, bringing up text files, images and spreadsheets with just the word “drive” and a keyword.
It’s a sublime tool, as it gives you an immediate shortcut into your messages, regardless of what apps or windows you currently have open. Both are supported in Alfred, although in Gmail’s case search results are limited to its Web incarnation, rather than any third-party email client you may be accessing it from on your Mac.īy typing “gmail” into Alfred, you can instantly jump to your inbox or begin searching for a specific message. If you’re invested in Google’s expansive suite of products and services, you probably use Gmail and Google Drive on a regular basis.
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr can all be triggered this way – for a full list of options, hit the Web Search tab in Alfred’s Preferences menu. The launcher supports a range of other sites too, although you’ll need to type in their name first to trigger a search query. For the latter, Alfred will often send you to the exact Wikipedia entry too, rather than a page of compatible search results. If you type a query into Alfred without any keywords whatsoever, the launcher will let you search via Google, Amazon or Wikipedia by default. For instance, I only need to type in “G”, followed by a keyword or query, for Alfred to offer me a Google Search results page by default.Īlfred goes even further by offering shortcuts to some of the most popular sites and services on the Web. If you want to search with Google Images, or look up a place on Google Maps, this is also supported with the keywords “images” and “maps” in Alfred, side-stepping what would have been additional steps or clicks in the browser.Īs Alfred learns your preferences, you’ll notice that it takes fewer characters to execute common tasks. If you type “Google” into Alfred’s search bar, you can easily follow it up with your chosen keywords and then have the corresponding results page appear instantly in your browser. Instead of jumping across to your chosen browser and searching with your preferred search engine, you can do all of this and more with Alfred.
Search the WebĪlthough Alfred is often described as an app launcher, its capabilities go far beyond the native software installed on your Mac.
Furthermore, Alfred gives you the ability to shut down every app running on your Mac with the phrase “quitall”, or force software that has become unresponsive to close with the keyword “forcequit”. It’s also possible to make programs invisible, while retaining their window positions by using the “hide” keyword.
When you’re finished with a piece of software, you can close it down with the “quit” keyword, followed by the name of the app. It’s similar to Spotlight, although Alfred’s numbered shortcuts are quicker than the arrow keys needed to hit secondary items in Apple’s built-in search tool. Hit return for the first option, or Command and the listed number key for any of Alfred’s other suggestions. Alfred will show a list of results instantaneously – oftentimes a single character will be enough to surface your intended app. Once you’ve installed Alfred on your Mac, open it with your chosen keyboard combo and begin typing the name of the app that you need. It might take a few days to train your brain so that it uses these commands instinctively, but trust me – it’ll be time well spent in the long run. Instead of dragging my cursor onto Launchpad, the dock or my application folder, I use Alfred to launch, hide and quit apps when needed. Google Chrome, TweetDeck, Fantastical, Evernote and Byword are the usual suspects, but I almost always end up opening and closing a handful of other, less frequently used apps too. On any given day, I use at least a dozen different apps on my Mac.