Mac Productivity with Alfred 3 and 4 / Getting Started

Are you sitting in front of your Mac all day and you think there must be a faster way of doing all kinds of things? I'd say you are right. And for many of those things, Alfred is the tool to do it.

Alfred is a macOS Productivity tool that makes searching for files, contacts, accessing the web, or doing calculations that much more efficient. And it's free in its base version.

Did I mention that — on average — I used Alfred 134 times per day? 134 times per day? Yep, Alfred tracks that, and since April 2013, when I started using the App I interacted with Alfred about 450.000 times. That's probably the most of use compared to any other app and thus also the best $$ I ever spent on the power pack upgrade.

I am so excited about this application and would love for you to try it too, get used to it and work more productively yourself and that's why I created this class:

In this class, I will give you a Starting guide to Alfred so you as well can get started to do things more easily.

- To do this we'll download Alfred,
- go over the interface and preferences,
- replace the spotlight search keyboard shortcut with Alfred (but I'll show you how to still access it),
- I share some standard settings with you that will make Alfred look beautiful and minimalistic,
- We'll get you up to speed on the free features so you know what you can do right now,
- and last but not least, I'll give you an overview of what is possible with the Alfred Powerpack.

Version Information:

Alfred 3 and Alfred 4 are essentially the same application. The update was significant, however, it's mostly a cosmetic update. The interface may look slightly different from what I am talking about in this class, but all the functions and features are still the same.

🎧 Chapters / Show Notes:

00:00 Opening
01:21 Introduction Alfred and Myself
09:03 Downloading and Installing Alfred
13:37 First Interface Overview
21:33 Replacing Spotlight Keyboard Shortcut
25:41 General Alfred Handling
36:18 Feature Overview
37:01 Features — Default Results
41:30 Features — File Search
48:08 Features — Web Search
53:28 Features — Web Bookmarks
57:03 Features — Calculator
59:52 Features — Dictionary
01:02:28 Features — Contacts
01:03:13 Features — System Commands
01:07:04 Features — Large Type
01:09:35 Apperance — Dark and Minimal
01:15:00 Advanced Tweaking
01:18:50 Alfred iOS Remote
01:20:42 Powerpack Usage Help and Updates
01:23:30 Main Class Closing
01:24:47 Powerpack Overview
01:26:59 Powerpack — Features Overview
01:27:54 Powerpack — File Search
01:33:59 Powerpack — Web Search
01:34:42 Powerpack — Contacts
01:35:48 Powerpack — Clipboard History
01:37:22 Powerpack — Snippets
01:39:03 Powerpack — iTunes Mini Player
01:39:57 Powerpack — 1Password
01:40:38 Powerpack — Terminal
01:41:31 Powerpack — Workflows
01:44:27 Powerpack — Apperance
01:46:29 Powerpack — Advanced
01:46:43 Closing this Class
01:48:42 About Me

What You'll Need for This Class

This class is intended to be a beginner's guide to the free version of Alfred. Additionally, you will learn about the features of the Alfred Powerpack which is the paid extension of Alfred so you can make a well-informed decision whether to upgrade or not (a hint: I think the free version is great to start with, but as you get used to Alfred you'll want to have the other features too).

Since Alfred is a macOS application, you'll need a Mac to follow along.

You do not need the Powerpack for this class. We'll focus on the free version and only take a peek into the Powerpack features.

[jdengelkirk]

Great video! Most comprehensive and easy to understand video I've watched.

[SuryaFriends]

I have seen many videos before on setting up alfred, I should have seen just this one to get started. thank you soo much it helped a lot & I have saved this video for future reference as well

[minceym]

This is one of the best video I've seen explaining Alfred. But is seems all of the videos seem to skip pass external drives. I have allot of my files on external drives which I would like to have the option to search on. For instance I have several .mp4 videos I would like to search. I have several files with the name water, I type in water and either I no results or some random .txt or .psd or something else. Can you explain how to search with this tool on external drives.

Thank you!

[mcffej]

How can you get Alfred to search iCloud Drive???