Have you heard of Alfred? It’s an amazingly useful Mac application. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do, you’ll wonder how you were ever productive without it.

What Alfred Can Do

It super-charges your Mac’s searching capabilities. Ever try to find something using Spotlight and get annoyed at waiting for it? With a simple spacebar + alt, you open up Alfred’s search bar. It’s fast, and constantly surprises me with just how well it can locate whatever I’m looking for.

It cuts out the middle man (your mouse). I used to navigate to the dock with my mouse, open Finder, hunt for a specific folder, and then a file within that folder. Now, without leaving my keyboard, I can locate and open whatever file I need.

It allows you to open applications, finder windows, or a specific URL from the Alfred portal. You can even set-up custom searches.

When I’m writing, I often realize I’ve used the same word over and over again. I set up a custom Alfred search, so if I wanted to find a synonym for amazing, all I have to do is type in ‘thes amazing’. Just like that, my browser pops open with the search results.

At a very basic level, Alfred allows you to be more effecient. The less time wasted simply navigating to URLs or files on your computer the better.

Alfred Upgrades

If you feel like upgrading from the free version, Alfred gets even more useful. There are downloadable expansion packs (Alfred calls them workflows) that add more features.

Back in April, the Alfred team posted some of it’s favourite workflows. One of them was AlfredTweet 2 by David Ferguson, which lets you tweet directly from the application.

Smashing Magazine has a great post on Alfred’s workflows for web designers. You can do cool stuff like convert color code formats, open files in FileZilla, and more.