In Mac OS, there are many native and third-party software that can greatly improve the efficiency of the Mac OS. Among these apps, one of the most famous is Alfred, the Mac’s most famous productivity machine.
With Alfred, you can control your Mac completely without taking your hands off the keyboard or the mouse. You can use Alfred to quickly open an App, search for the files you want, quickly search the web, customize specific workflows, move arbitrary files, have the system clipboard under your control, and much more. Alfred is in some cases a perfect substitute for Spotlight, the Mac native software, but it goes far beyond that. So, with Alfred, you can totally get rid of Spotlight.
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Alfred provides the following set of features:
The App launched. You can quickly open an App by typing a few simple letters.
File search. Just input part of the filename string, you can quickly search out a file, and even search based on the keywords in the file content;
Internet search. Enter a specific keyword to search for content in any specific search engine without first opening a browser;
Calculator. You can directly enter the expression in the input field for calculation;
In the dictionary. You can directly input words in the input field for translation;
Contact list. You can quickly open the relevant information of a contact, including phone number and Email.
Shear plate history. Remember all the text, images, links, etc you copied before and paste them selectively;
Abbreviations and text extensions. Just a few simple letters, you can enter some common statements;
ITunes Mini Player. You can use the mini player to control your music collection without a mouse.
1 password. Do you have too many passwords to remember? It doesn’t matter, 1Password will help you;
System command. Alfred contains a series of system commands that you can type into Alfred to control your Mac.
Terminal. You can quickly execute common terminal commands in the Alfred input field.
Remote control. Turn Alfred into a Mac control center that allows you to remotely control your Mac using your iPhone or iPad.
Workflow. Alfred’s most powerful tools can be customized to any workflow you want, making some complex tasks requiring many steps into simple automated processes, greatly improving your learning efficiency;
Appearance theme. Appearance level control? It doesn’t matter, you can customize Alfred’s look and choose your own theme.
Alfred basic operation introduction
Start the Alfred
By default, when Alfred is installed on a Mac, it starts up automatically when the system starts up and then sits in the background waiting for you to call. You can open Alfred by clicking the little hat button on the right side of the desktop MenuBar.
But usually you choose hotkeys to launch Alfred. Alfred’s default startup hotkey is Alt + Space, which brings up the magical Alfred interface.
However, in many cases Alt + Space is usually used as a hotkey for switching input methods, so this can cause conflict between the two. If this happens, you need to change Alfred’s default startup hotkey. As mentioned, Alfred is a perfect replacement for Spotlight, and the default launch hotkey for Spotlight is Command + Space, so why not use that as a launch hotkey for Alfred?
Change the startup hotkey for Alfred
Click on the small hat in the upper right corner of the desktop, click Preferences to open Alfred’s Settings panel, and click General above to open the General Settings panel.
Click Alfred Hotkey and enter the appropriate key combination to set the launch key. Click here and press Command and Space at the same time to set Command + Space as the launch hotkey. Now try pressing both keys at the same time. Is Alfred easy to launch?
Start the App
To launch an App, you don’t have to launch the Launchpad, use the mouse to look it up and click. Just press the hotkey you set to launch Alfred, type one of the letters of the App, and then press Enter to launch the App.
If multiple matching apps appear after the letter is entered, you can use the Up/Down key to select.
Find files
Alfred allows you to quickly locate a file based on the name of the file, and then directly open the file or the folder in which the file is located.
“Open” keyword, direct search open files. Enter the keyword “open” to find a file based on a particular filename, then press Enter to open the file directly,
You can also do this by typing the Space key followed by the filename string, which is much faster.
The “find” keyword opens the folder where the file resides. Enter the keyword “find” to find files based on a specific file name, and then press Enter to open the folder in which the specified file resides.
The Internet search
Alfred makes your web search faster by typing in a specific search engine keyword followed by the search you want to search for, without first launching your browser and opening the search engine screen. Alfred does this for you automatically. Open Alfred’s Settings screen and click On Web Search under Features to see some of the default Search engine keywords, such as GL for Google, Maps for Apple Map, and Wiki for Wikipedia.
To do a web search with Alfred, you press a hotkey to open the Alfred field, Enter a specific keyword, type in the desired search, and press Enter to open the search engine’s search results page directly in your browser. For example, typing “gl Alfred” leads to Google’s search for Alfed. Enter “Wiki MAC” to open the MAC page in Wikipedia, which is very convenient.
Not only can you use Alfred’s default keywords to search for specific search engines, but more powerful is the ability to customize your keywords to search for relevant content on your site.
Custom Web search
Alfred’s default search engine keywords are limited, and you can customize your own web search keywords when you want to find the sites you want. The configuration steps are as follows:
1. Open the corresponding website in the browser and enter some content to search for the website. For example, open douban here and enter “Three-body” for search;
2. Navigate to the address bar of your browser. You can see the relevant URL. Q = ‘three-body’ “string, so we can know to change” search? Q = “after the string, you can find the corresponding content in douban;
3. Open Alfred’s Web Search Settings screen and click Add Custom Search in the lower right corner to Add a Custom Search.
4. After opening the Settings screen, perform the following Settings:
Search URL: Paste the URL in the input box. Change the string after q= to {query};
Title: Input suggestive statements;
Keyword: Any Keyword you want to search with this search engine. You can enter any Keyword, but it is important that it is concise and does not duplicate other keywords. Here because it is douban search, so the keyword input “DB”;
Validation: Enter any content in the input field and click Test to search for the content using the previous URL.
5. Click Save in the lower right to Save the Settings, and then you can see the custom Search in the Web Search.
6. Press the hot key to start the Alfred interface, Enter “DB + search content”, and press Enter to directly open the search results page of the corresponding content in Douban, isn’t it convenient?
Using Alfred will not only improve your productivity, but also help you appreciate the beauty of the Mac ecosystem and make it work for you.