Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Essential Mac Apps - Alfred

Name: Alfred
Price: FREE

Mac OS X comes with Finder and spotlight to do all the file management and searching. Unfortunately, They can get pretty slow, and not all that functional.

That's where Alfred comes in.


As a replacement for spotlight, Alfred can of course search your computer, you just type the shortcut you set to activate it (you can change that later) and start typing.


When you find what you are looking for you just press enter and Alfred will launch the application/document/file you selected.

It can also do maths (both simple and advanced*)

* Advanced functions require you put an '=' sign before the query


Search the web just by typing


There are keywords that do special things, for example spell and define.


The Power Pack 

All that is great, and gets better. If you purchase (for £12) and install the Power Pack you get some awesome features:
Power Pack
The best one, in my opinion, is the mini iTunes controller. 
You can search for songs, playlists, artists, albums and pause and play them. For simplicity's sake, the mini player gets its own shortcut. 


Access to contacts:


Execute AppleScript and Terminal commands with, again, keywords. For example, a command to shorten URLs and copy them to the clipboard for easier sharing



These are just a few of the features that make Alfred an awesome app and one that I can't live without. 

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