2.2 Launching Apps, Files, and Folders

Ok, let’s get started. One of the most common things you’ll do with Alfred is launch apps. You are not going to need your dock. So if I just type “SAF” for Safari, you can see it comes up and then over on the right you can see there’s a return key. If I hit the return key, it opens up Safari. If I hit Command 2, it opens DuckDuckGo. If I hit Command 3, it’s DarkReader, and Command 4 is Grammarly for Safari.

I can also use the arrow keys to go up and down, but usually it’s the default answer and you just hit return and it will open up Safari for you. Now, you can also note that Alfred will learn your preferences. For instance, OmniFocus—if you spell it literally—is O-M-N-I, and it shows it up for me. But if I type O-F, it also shows up for me because it knows that’s what I prefer. When I type O-F just to open OmniFocus, it does not have to be literal.

So it looks at abbreviations and your own behaviors. For instance, if I went down after typing O-F and hit Recording Light Off, and if I did that several times, then it would learn that the new behavior is when I type O-F, I want to turn my recording light off in the studio. But it’s OmniFocus, so that’s the way I launch OmniFocus.

Think of any application you want to launch—you can get there very quickly. Preview, I just type PRE and it showed up as the second entry. So I hit Command 2 and launched it. The next time, Preview showed up as the first entry. Alfred is really smart. It looks at your preferences and adapts.

You can also open files. The command to open a file is “Open.” So you just hit that, then type the name. Let’s say I’m looking for the logo for MacSparky. There you go—it found it. There’s a bunch of them there. Use the arrow keys to select, then hit Return. It opens in Preview since it’s a JPEG. You don’t even need to type “Open.” Hitting the Spacebar does the same thing.

Let’s try searching “MacSparky Logo Transparent.” That gives it more to work with. There it is. If I tap the Shift key, it previews it. If I want to locate the file in Finder, I can use the “Find” command or just use Command + Return. Alfred lets you search for filenames even if the word order isn’t exact.

You can also search file contents. Try typing “Mark Twain.” If you have files where his name appears, they’ll show up. Tap Shift to preview. You can also search by tag. Type “tags,” then “speech.” It finds your speech-tagged files. Want to confirm the tag? Hit Command + Return and check the Finder’s info.

You can search by file type too. Type “.key” to find Keynote files. You can even search partial matches like “PFG” for the Productivity Field Guide. Once you get this under your fingers, you won’t want to use Finder anymore.

You can also find folders. For example, type Space + “logo.” Watch the search results. Hold Command + Arrow Down to drill into folders. You can navigate folder levels with Command + Arrow keys. Want a preview? Tap Shift. Want to reveal in Finder? Command + Return.

These are just the basics. There’s so much more Alfred can do—but already, you can see how powerful this tool is.