BEST Productivity Mac App: Alfred - Setup & Walkthrough

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because you're going to be getting a classic Legacy version and you'll be missing out on a ton of useful features including the pro features that come with the power pack license so let's open the browser go to alfredapp.com and download it directly from here and just to put any concerns about safety to rest it is absolutely safe to download it outside of the App Store I won't bore you with the details but it's developer ID signed and notarized meaning that every single update that's pushed by the development team is automatically checked by Apple ensuring that you're getting a trustworthy download so with Alfred downloaded let's take care of the first thing which is disabling the keyboard shortcut that currently opens the spotlight tool so we can have that same shortcut open Alfred instead so go ahead and hit command space to open the spotlight tool type keyboard and hit enter to open the settings click keyboard settings keyboard shortcuts Spotlight from the left side menu here and uncheck both of these because we're going to have the Alfred shortcut set to command space then let's come over here to desktop and Doc and if we scroll down under default browser settings make sure you have the browser that you want as your default browser set here because this is the browser that Alfred will use for any type of web searching now that we're done there let's type the default Alfred shortcut which is option space type Alfred and hit enter to open the preferences click on the Alfred hotkey box here and type command space to set that as the default shortcut moving forward so now that we have the shortcut set up let's go over a few of the most commonly used Alfred commands first you can type command space to launch Alfred which essentially allows you to do anything internally on your Mac that you would have done with the spotlight tool some examples are opening any app that you want or running system processes like putting your Mac to sleep and emptying the trash although by typing command space launch Alfred you could search for things externally as well and this is one of the main things that separates Alfred from Spotlight for example you can quickly search for things on Google find products on Amazon or you know if you feel like it you can search my channel directly on YouTube to like And subscribe second you can type command space followed by another space to open any file that you already know the name of third by typing command space followed by a keyword which we'll walk through how to set up custom keywords in a little bit you can reduce how much you need to type to do certain things like typing a instead of Amazon G instead of Google and YT instead of YouTube and finally we can start customizing the alpha preferences by typing command space followed by Alfred and enter but before we dive into the main settings of Alfred let's go ahead into the appearances Tab and select the one that we want to use personally I go with the frosty teal because it adds more contrast than the standard dark and light themes and well I just like it this is personal preference though so pick the one that you want and roll with it now if you're a minimalist or you just want your Alfred search bar to look cleaner you can click on options down in the bottom left here and check hide hat on Alfred window so that when you type command space to launch it you'll see that the Alfred logo is no longer there you can clean things up even more by checking hide menu bar icon to remove the logo from your menu bar now if we come over to the show Alfred on drop down here I set this to Mouse screen because with having multiple monitors I want Alpha to pop up on the screen I'm actually using so it's just a quick movement of the mouse to get to it let's come over to the features Tab and everything inside of the default results tab is open with the basic command space shortcut I purposely leave all of these except for contacts unchecked because I want to be able to use the command space space shortcut to navigate through my files and folders and the reason I leave contacts checked is because if you use apple contacts like I do you can really quickly find the name of any of your contacts by typing command space followed by a name which I'll type Dad here and if I hit enter though his entire contact card will pop up again I purposely leave all of the other ones unchecked because if we come down here into file search this is where we can set up the Alfred preferences for how it searches internally on your Mac for files and folders by typing command space space and if we take a look at the don't show section here you see that I leave the default settings so I don't see emails contacts calendar and everything else here I actually also check images and music to hide those from file searches as well now let's come over to the web search Tab and this is where all of your web Search keywords are housed that you can type before your search to let Alfred know exactly how you want to conduct the search for example if I type Google and something that I want to search it'll open the default browser and perform that search on Google although if you use some of these web searches often you can shorten them like I did for YouTube Here by simply double clicking and renaming it to whatever you'd like now along with changing YouTube to YT I also shortened Google to just G to make searching the web a lot easier and Amazon to a because I admittedly spend way more than I should on Amazon and practically have packages showing up on my doorstep every day at this point a little off topic but if you like free money and credit card hacking as much as I do and you don't have the Amazon credit card already I cannot recommend it enough there's zero annual fee and you get an unbeatable five percent cash back on everything you buy through Amazon and at Whole Foods now I did include a referral Link in the description below the video that you can use to get a 150 Amazon gift card after you're approved and the approval process is immediate so if that interests you go ahead click that link to get yourself the Amazon credit card the 150 gift card and five percent cash back on everything through Amazon and Whole Foods with that being said let's get back on track and come down here into the systems tab within here the only thing I do is I uncheck the volume toggles because I like to keep it simple and just use my keyboard to control the volume now if you have the power pack license which like I said I'll be giving away five of them in this video you'll have access to features and workflows that are honestly so good once you start using you'll never be able to live without first up is one that I use dozens of times a day and an absolute must-have called clipboard history which is a clipboard manager that retains an organized history of the text links images files and anything else you can think of to copy that you might need access to again this feature saves a boatload of time from having to go back and forth between Windows to copy and paste things one by one as you can copy multiple things at once for later use you can type to set a keyboard shortcut for it specify how long you want copied items to stay inside of it and even set it up for multiple devices for example let's say that I want to copy this from my computer then go to my phone to copy this then go back to my computer and with the clipboard manager I could really easily paste both foreign next up is temporary email which is another must have because we've all come across a situation where you need to input your email address to download a free course guide or any other resource you can think of from a website the problem with this is that the owner of the website typically adds your email address to an email drip campaign bombarding your personal inbox with emails and upsells that you then need to go in and manually unsubscribe from with temporary email this is no longer a problem though as it generates a fake email address you can use to get past the sign up wall without needing to serve your personal email address up on a platter for those marketing drip campaigns so to use this just type command space to launch Alfred then type TMP and hit enter you'll see the browser open a new tab with an inbox that's waiting for whatever it is that you just downloaded to be received and once it comes through you can read the email entirely download anything attached to it like the resource or even forward the entire email to your personal inbox now whether you're minimalist like me who just likes a clean desktop or someone who just wants to hide embarrassing folders from your boss when you're in Zoom calls for work this one's for you and it's called toggle desktop icons using this one's really simple Just Launch Alfred type TDI and hit enter and it'll hide all of the files and folders on your desktop and then to see them again just launch Alfred and repeat the same process although if you watched my previous video on the top 10 apps for Mac users you'll know that this is really similar in functionality to the hid me app although instead of needing to download multiple apps you can just do all of this inside of Alfred next up is one that everyone needs and that's a password manager now Alfred does have one built in that's great for the everyday user called one password which for the longest time was easily my most used feature and I'll explain why it isn't any more in just a bit but for the average user this is an extremely useful feature because it houses all of your personal login information as you can see if I type 1p it shows all of my saved usernames and passwords if you need to use one of these you can type to find the one you want press enter and Alfred will launch the browser taking you straight to the website with your login information automatically added like I said this was easily my most used feature for the longest time but if you own or operate a business like I do no matter if it's a smaller Mom and Pop shop or a Fortune 500 Enterprise you'll need a password manager that offers a much more comprehensive Suite of features like nordpass business the sponsor of today's video nordpass provides exceptional password Management Solutions with industry-leading security not only on an individual basis but company-wide as well so you can say goodbye to the risk of malicious attacks caused by weak passwords during employee onboarding as you can establish company-wide password policies ensuring that those new hires don't put your entire organization at risk by using the same Die Hard Swifty password across all their accounts nordpass even takes it a step further by automatically generating strong and unique passwords that can be autofilled across all devices eliminating the security threat of Post-it notes with sensitive information scattered across work monitors throughout the office nordpass isn't just a password manager though it's a comprehensive solution that stores other confidential information like office alarm codes and Wi-Fi passwords login details for third-party softwares and even credit card payment information team specific unified vaults are perfect for storing team assets that can be updated as needed and securely shared with team members at the click of a button instead of sending confidential information via text or email you can see nordpass business in action for yourself now and get a free three-month trial with the code Chris tomshak by clicking the link in the description below for my productivity enthusiasts out there there's a built-in Pomodoro Timer called Yak to use this launch Alfred and type Yak which will start the 25 minute Pomodoro Timer and set off a notification once the time is up Yak is configurable to any amount of time that you want but since 25 minutes is kind of the tried and true time frame for the Pomodoro Technique you can set custom timers with an Alfred by using timer so to use this just launch Alfred and type timer followed by a specified time frame like 10m which stands for 10 minutes and this will start a 10 minute timer that'll also ping a notification once the timer is up so as you can see there are a ton of useful workflows and on top of the ones we already covered you can also create your own custom workflows which if we dove into that this video would be over an hour long and neither of us want that if you are interested though I recommend checking out more of the popular workflows that others have built already on the Alfred website which I Linked In the description below the video so there you have it from download and setup to exploring a lot of the free and paid features I hope you got some insight into how you can best leverage Alfred to supercharge your productivity before signing off though I do want to let you know know that I read every comment and notice several recommendations on past videos for using raycast over Alfred so I spent some time familiarizing myself with it and can completely agree that it's another extremely powerful app although in my opinion productivity is more about maximizing efficiency within your own systems and processes and less about the app or platform used to do it both apps have learning curves and just like everything else in life it's really easy to get caught up in searching for the perfect solution instead of optimizing the things you already have in place so even though we covered a lot in this video to help dampen the learning curve for Alfred I encourage you to pick one and invest the time mastering it so using the features become second nature with that being said thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Chris Tomshack

Views: 72,980

Keywords: M2 Mac computers, 8GB vs. 16GB RAM, Mac performance, M2, M1, M1 Mac, M2 Mac, M2 Macbook Air, M2 Macbook Pro, M1 Macbook Pro, M1 Macbook Air, Productivity, Macbook Productivity, 256GB, 512GB, Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, macbook air 15 inch, macbook air 15, Alfred, alfred mac, alfred workflow, alfred powerpack, best mac apps, alfred tutorial, alfred setup, must have mac apps, how to, alfred mac tutorial, alfred vs spotlight, favorite macos apps, mac apps, mac tips

Id: NbTvpxhGwvs

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023