Meet Alfred. My favorite app on the Mac OS X platform. “Alfred is an app to help launch applications and find files on your Mac or on the web. Alfred learns how you use your Mac and prioritize results when you type. Save countless hours by using hotkeys, keywords and customizing how you want to search your Mac and activity history”. Alfred is, hands down, my favorite app on Mac OS X and I’m not ashamed of that. Sure, I’m a WordPress guy at heart. That doesn’t mean that I do not search. In fact, I search a lot. Thanks to my favorite app.
How I Use My Favorite App
I wrote this blog post a few days ago about how Macbook Pro changed the way I work. When I first started working with Mac, I knew apps were a thing but I was not a huge app user. I would attend the Vegas WordPress Meet Up Group and see that everyone, almost everyone, had an Apple computer. I would ask other members about their favorite apps. John Hawkins showed me this app called Alfred. He showed me how it would help him search for things on his computer. Apple has a search feature called Spotlight. It’s not my favorite way to search on an Apple. After seeing how John used it, I started using it.
When you first use Alfred, there are very few options selected. I think that’s just in case you didn’t want to search through every file in your computer and tax your memory limits. Which makes sense by the way. I changed some of the configurations around and I was flying. Now I all had to do was double tap the option key and Alfred would appear. As if I was calling a personal butler to complete a task. It was so fetch. I know fetch will never be a thing, but who cares. Within the first few days, I already forgot about Spotlight and stopped using Google.com to search for everything. Inside of Alfred, you can just say google pizza, and the app will load your default browser with a Google search results page for pizza.I mean, talk about streamlining your process.
One day I was trying to find a file on my computer. It was a .psd file I needed to use to create a new blog post featured image. I opened up Finder, the folder system on Mac OS X, and I was searching high and low. I then remembered that I had Alfred to do these things for me. Since that day, I’ve never opened Finder. Unless I really need to.
My Favorite App Is Not Perfect
Sometimes, I’ll save a series of files with dates in the title. So instead of saving my resume as “russell-resume.pdf“, I’ll save it as “russell-resume-8-12-2015.pdf“. The problem is that I always forget the name of a file, so I’ll search for the date. A million files come up with the same date and I have to scroll down to find the file. Alfred only shows the top 9 search results. So sometimes, you have to be a little specific when searching for something using my favorite app. The irony is that I always talk about being specific. When you ask for a drink, and you want a Coca-Cola, you need to be specific and ask for a Coca-Cola. If you just ask for a drink, and someone gives you water, it’s not their fault that they didn’t know you wanted a Coca Cola.
I highly suggest test driving Alfred, my favorite app, on your iMac or Macbook Pro. You can download it on the apps store, or by going to their website to download the newest version, Alfred 2. When I tell people that I have Alfred, I always think about the famous character in the Batman Comics & Movies. So my question is, does it mean that using Alfred app makes me Batman? Am I a billionaire just by using the app? If so, I haven’t received my check in the mail yet. What is your “my favorite app” that you use? Maybe you could write something on your blog? I’d read it. I’ll join up.