There are lots of famous butlers from TV and movies: Mr. Belvedere, Jeeves, Max, Lurch. But my favorite is Alfred from the Batman series.
Alfred is also the name of my current favorite Mac app. It’s a powerful little app that will do so much.
The Alfred app features are saving me so much time, too!
Getting Started
The first thing you do is head over to AlfredApp.com and download the app. I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts, and the great thing about this app is that it will open by hitting one of those. For me, I hit Alt—->Space bar, and it pops up. You can configure this to what works best for you.
What all will it do?
Well a bunch of things (and even more if you get the PowerPack).
Here’s a short list of my favorite things.
- Google search. Need to do a fast Google search? Well, hit that keyboard shortcut, and input the info you need. Boom!
- Calculator and dictionary. Can’t remember what 5+5 is? Alfred does. Ask it, and ye shall receive.
- Find applications and files and open them. This is by far my favorite feature. I always find myself stuck hunting and pecking for the right app either in my Application folder or on the dock. Not any more. Type it into Alfred and it opens it for you! Perfect AND a big timesaver.
Download Alfred and get started today learning about the other great ways you can use it.
Do you have a favorite Alfred command?
Tell us about it!
Eric Dye says
I love the ability to open Alfred, hit the spacebar, and then begin to type the file I want opened. In fact, I’ve changed my file naming to make this even more effective!
I also like the calculator feature, too, especially since it automatically copies the answer for quick pasting.
Although Alfred is nice as a free version, the Power Pack gives the ability to save text snippets which I’ve found to be really useful, too. 😀
Jeff Grosse says
Here are some of my favorite things to do with Alfred.
1) Custom search of my own blog – Often I want to find one of my past blog posts quick. This custom search makes it drop-dead-simple to find my post.
2) Keystroke shortcuts – I use several of these to launch web pages I use often. In some cases, it’s my favorite radio station “listen now” page, for others, it’s immediate access to a Google Spreadsheet I use. Using shortcuts, I am 2 or 3 keys from what I need instead of moving my hands to the mouse to even click a browser shortcut.
3) Clipboard history – There are times I’m filling in multiple fields on a form, time and time again. By using Command+Option+C, I can paste in any of the last few copied groups of text into the place my cursor is. This is a killer-helpful feature.