3.2 Installing Workflows - System Settings
3.2 Installing Workflows – System Settings (Transcript)
All right, let’s start improving on Alfred by adding workflows. To do that, let’s use Alfred.
I’m going to do a Google search for Alfred workflows. And it’s going to find the website for the Alfred workflows. I’ll also have this down below in the link so you can just click it. But I thought it’d be fun to use Alfred to get there.
So you go to this page, and this is where they share their workflows with you. On this page, they’ve got an explanation of how workflows work. And they’ve got this gallery button. And this is where it’s really at. You want to go here.
They’ve got a listing of all the available workflows through the Alfred site. Now, this isn’t a complete listing. There are 312 on this page. I know because I’ve gone through them, and I’ve picked the best ones for this course. But there are also third parties that have made workflows that they distribute elsewhere on the web, and that’s totally legit with Alfred.
I do prefer the ones from the Alfred site though, because I feel like they’ve been vetted a bit by the Alfred developers. But there are some third party ones I’ll be sharing in this course from people I trust.
But let’s start with this one, because I think it’s really useful. Anytime you’ve got one, you click on it, and it gives you this page where they give you a description of how it works. You can see what the commands are. That’s the stuff in the highlight.
This one allows me to dive into my settings to a specific page with an Alfred command, which is really handy. And then there’s usually a screenshot of it. And that’s all we need.
To install it, you just hit Install at Alfred. And then it goes straight to the application. It installs it. And then it gives you the big Install button.
Before we do that, though, they do have categories you can choose from. Here’s a couple. Let’s go ahead and mark this as a tool. And then I’m going to click Install. And now I’ve added this to Alfred. And you can see over here on the sidebar, we’re in Workflows. Now we’ve got System Settings available to us.
And we’re going to go through in one of the later screencasts and build one of these together. But the real key here is honestly taking advantage of what everybody else has already done.
Each one of these is a different command, and it’s directing the open URL command, which allows you to get to a specific setting on your Mac. That’s the stuff happening under the hood. You don’t really need to know any of that.
All you really need to look at is this Configure Workflow button, and this gives you the available commands. So if I want to say “about,” or “mouse,” or “region,” or whatever, this stuff is all available to me now in Alfred.
So let’s go ahead and save that, close Alfred, and close the web. And I’m going to invoke Alfred. And one of the commands that got added was Wi-Fi. So if I just say “Wi-Fi” and open it, there’s my Wi-Fi settings. And I get to them that fast.
Look at all these here. Let’s say VPN. We want to do VPN. You can see there it is. And I open that up, and it gives me my VPN panel. Or if I want to go to the general settings, I can do that too.
It’s just really nice. This is a way to get to your specific system settings without having to use your mouse and dig around.
So that’s our first workflow we’ve installed. I recommend everybody install this one. It’s just so useful. Once you remember it’s there, it’s really going to help you out. And if you continue through this section, we’re going to have a lot more.