 So at any given moment I'm doing a million things on my computer. I've got 50 windows open and a ton of apps and I need to move on to the next thing. Luckily there's an app that helps me do that. It's called Alfred. It lets you launch apps, search Google and do a whole lot of other stuff really quickly. So Alfred is just an app for the Mac. It's in the app store or you can pay for it from the developer directly and it's just a text box. So it's a lot like Spotlight. You launch it with a key command and you start typing. It's a lot like apps that used to exist for the Mac like Quicksilver or Launchbar. So typically if you want to launch an app you've got to go down to your dock or you've got to open up your applications folder and if you're like me you've got a ton of applications that are kind of hard to find. But with Alfred you can just launch the text box, type in the name of the application, hit enter and you're done. Same thing with Google searches. With a browser you've got to tab over to the browser, you've got to put the mouse up over to the search box, you've got to click it and you've got to do your search. But with Alfred you just hit the hot key, launch the text box, type in the thing you want to search for, hit enter and you're done. I mean one of my favorite things about Alfred is you don't have to think about what app you want to use necessarily. If you want to search IMDB you just start typing IMDB. If you want to launch an app you just launch an app. It's based on actions instead of apps. So for example I know I've got an email sitting in my Gmail inbox and I've got Alfred hooked up to my Gmail so instead of opening Gmail and then going to the search box I just start typing the thing that I want and then one of the options that drops down is to search Gmail for that thing. Searching all those different default web services is great but I work on the web and I work on a specific website, I work on the Verge and so I've set up a whole bunch of custom searches that just work on the Verge. So for example if I want to search for a tag on the Verge I can just open up Alfred, I type VT which is how I've set it up and I can search for a tag like Motorola and it will automatically show me everything from Motorola on the Verge. So beyond just typing text into a box Alfred actually has a ton of other features and I don't use them all but one that I'm really fond of is a clipboard history. It automatically keeps a record of everything that you put into the clipboard and then pastes it and you can call that up with a quick keyboard combo. So another part of the keyboard history is this thing called snippets which lets you save lots and lots of different text and call them up later and so for example I've got a whole bunch of GIFs that I save and so I can very quickly type in bias and I've got a thing for bias where I can very type in GTFO and I've got a GTFO GIF which is great. So once you've gotten used to doing all this stuff with Alfred you want to go even faster and you can set up hotkeys to do some of these actions automatically. So I have a hotkey set up to automatically bring up the clipboard history, I've got a hotkey set up to clear out a folder that I clear out on a regular basis. Instead of actually typing in the thing that I want to do in Alfred I just hit a certain key combo and have things automatically happen. So there's actually a small developer community around Alfred that's created a whole bunch of added functionality basically like little apps that attach to it so I use it to do things like automatically create calendar entries with Fantastical or to-do lists, restarting my audio when it gets broken, I've got Apple scripts for to-do lists and a whole bunch of other stuff, it's actually pretty great. So the thing about Alfred is it can be really complex, there's a ton of features and I don't even use all of them. But the nice thing is you don't actually have to use all of them, you just start with some simple Google searches and launching some apps and get that into your workflow and then once you do you can see if you want to start using the other stuff. There's been studies that it might not actually be that much faster but the point is that it feels faster and it feels more powerful than just moving my mouse around. In the Alfred preferences there's a tab that lets you see your usage and it tells me that I launch on an average of 40 times a day which is pretty amazing and it feels like it's more, it's such an integral part of my workflow that I couldn't imagine using a Mac without it.
 So at any given moment I'm doing a million things on my computer.
 I've got 50 windows open and a ton of apps and I need to move on to the next thing.
 Luckily there's an app that helps me do that.
 It's called Alfred.
 It lets you launch apps, search Google and do a whole lot of other stuff really quickly.
 So Alfred is just an app for the Mac.
 It's in the app store or you can pay for it from the developer directly and it's just
 a text box.
 So it's a lot like Spotlight.
 You launch it with a key command and you start typing.
 It's a lot like apps that used to exist for the Mac like Quicksilver or Launchbar.
 So typically if you want to launch an app you've got to go down to your dock or you've
 got to open up your applications folder and if you're like me you've got a ton of applications
 that are kind of hard to find.
 But with Alfred you can just launch the text box, type in the name of the application,
 hit enter and you're done.
 Same thing with Google searches.
 With a browser you've got to tab over to the browser, you've got to put the mouse up over
 to the search box, you've got to click it and you've got to do your search.
 But with Alfred you just hit the hot key, launch the text box, type in the thing you
 want to search for, hit enter and you're done.
 I mean one of my favorite things about Alfred is you don't have to think about what app
 you want to use necessarily.
 If you want to search IMDB you just start typing IMDB.
 If you want to launch an app you just launch an app.
 It's based on actions instead of apps.
 So for example I know I've got an email sitting in my Gmail inbox and I've got Alfred hooked
 up to my Gmail so instead of opening Gmail and then going to the search box I just start
 typing the thing that I want and then one of the options that drops down is to search
 Gmail for that thing.
 Searching all those different default web services is great but I work on the web and
 I work on a specific website, I work on the Verge and so I've set up a whole bunch of
 custom searches that just work on the Verge.
 So for example if I want to search for a tag on the Verge I can just open up Alfred, I
 type VT which is how I've set it up and I can search for a tag like Motorola and it
 will automatically show me everything from Motorola on the Verge.
 So beyond just typing text into a box Alfred actually has a ton of other features and I
 don't use them all but one that I'm really fond of is a clipboard history.
 It automatically keeps a record of everything that you put into the clipboard and then pastes
 it and you can call that up with a quick keyboard combo.
 So another part of the keyboard history is this thing called snippets which lets you
 save lots and lots of different text and call them up later and so for example I've got
 a whole bunch of GIFs that I save and so I can very quickly type in bias and I've got
 a thing for bias where I can very type in GTFO and I've got a GTFO GIF which is great.
 So once you've gotten used to doing all this stuff with Alfred you want to go even faster
 and you can set up hotkeys to do some of these actions automatically.
 So I have a hotkey set up to automatically bring up the clipboard history, I've got a
 hotkey set up to clear out a folder that I clear out on a regular basis.
 Instead of actually typing in the thing that I want to do in Alfred I just hit a certain
 key combo and have things automatically happen.
 So there's actually a small developer community around Alfred that's created a whole bunch
 of added functionality basically like little apps that attach to it so I use it to do things
 like automatically create calendar entries with Fantastical or to-do lists, restarting
 my audio when it gets broken, I've got Apple scripts for to-do lists and a whole bunch
 of other stuff, it's actually pretty great.
 So the thing about Alfred is it can be really complex, there's a ton of features and I don't
 even use all of them.
 But the nice thing is you don't actually have to use all of them, you just start with some
 simple Google searches and launching some apps and get that into your workflow and then
 once you do you can see if you want to start using the other stuff.
 There's been studies that it might not actually be that much faster but the point is that
 it feels faster and it feels more powerful than just moving my mouse around.
 In the Alfred preferences there's a tab that lets you see your usage and it tells me that
 I launch on an average of 40 times a day which is pretty amazing and it feels like it's more,
 it's such an integral part of my workflow that I couldn't imagine using a Mac without
 it.