MasterBruce

It seems like one of the biggest bottlenecks day to day is the process of searching through a number of different places to find personal information.

Most of us have info collected in a number of different places:

- Google Drive

- local drive

- bookmarks

- Evernote

- that other app you hardly use any more

- etc

With Spotlight, a query shows results from a few different places that have been indexed. It doesn't seem that you can add additional places. It doesn't seem that Alfred can do this, either.

What is your solution to this major bottleneck of performing multiple queries in order to find what you need?

15 hours ago, possertive said:

I'm not getting any results. Is this still working?

It's working for me.

1. Bring up Alfred

2. Type "ns " and then your search term.

3. After a small delay, the results populate.

Could this be used somehow to query multiple workflows at one time?

My dream is to be able to query globally, to get results from multiple search engines as well as Alfred workflows that query other sites/apps.

How might I adapt this to accomplish that? Or is there a better way? Thanks so much!

Hi all! I appreciate your help with this challenge. This may be super obvious and easy.

How can you add a workflow to default search?

Here's what I mean. I added an awesome workflow called Notion.so Instant Search Workflow so that typing "ns {query}" will search my Notion account. I love it.

I hope to also include these Notion workflow search results in my Alfred searches for everything:

- I hope to just type my query into Alfred and then see a mixed list of local files and Notion pages.

- A second best option would be if I could type a different keyword to do such a query.

Possible approaches:

- Maybe I should add an additional trigger to the Notion workflow to represent another query?

- Maybe I should make a change somewhere in settings so that the Notion workflow is added to the default search?

Ultimately, I hope to add 3-4 workflows to the default Alfred search, so that I can see matches from a few different places: local files, bookmarks, Notion, etc.

Thanks so much!

This is beautiful, @wrjlewis

You're amazing!

In the readme you mention:

Quote

If you prefer using the Mac app of Notion, just replace https://www.notion.so with notion://www.notion.so/ in the workflow script.

Please clarify where, or just provide the full script, for simplicity. It isn't quite working for me.

Thanks so much!!

Hi there! I wonder if anyone uses Alfred with a tool that "bookmarks" everything: files, bookmark urls, photos, notes, etc.

My goal is to easily search for files/resources of all kinds, all at once. I am hoping to quicksearch for names and content, and to instantly find suggestions of all types.

To make this as effective as possible, I'm exploring tools that will offer advanced tools (tags, etc) for "universal bookmarking" of files, bookmark urls, etc:

- Pocket

- RainDrop

- Memex

- Dropbox?

- Evernote?

- Etc

What tools and workflows do you use of this sort? How are you happy with it, and how is it limited?

Also, if you can you help me with terminology and frame of mind, I appreciate that too.

Thanks SO much. I'm hoping to permanently shift to a more organized digital life. 😊

Thank you for these tremendously helpful responses!

Here are some further points from Alfred support, that may be helpful for anyone else wondering about this stuff:

Quote

Your Alfred preferences are stored on your Mac, or on the sync service of your choice if you choose to enable this. He doesn't connect back to our server aside from checking for software updates periodically, and when you activate your Powerpack license.

We don't track your usage, and no data is sent back to us about the files on your Mac. Alfred uses the Spotlight metadata, which is available to all apps on your Mac, in order to return search results locally.

Depending on which workflows you choose to use, some may need to connect to APIs (e.g. Google Suggest needs to connect to Google in order to provide you with in-line results), so it's worth establishing whether you're happy with specific workflows before using them.
If you uncheck the "Automatically check for updates" box in the Update tab of Alfred's Preferences, then this will turn off the only connection Alfred makes.

Great tips!

Hi all!

I'd like thoughtful help to consider privacy with Alfred.

Access

When we give permissions, whatever we give the app access to — where might that info be sent, and how is that transparent? Ideally, I'd love to know for certain that my local data is sent nowhere.

Safeguarding

On a similar note, what would be a wise safeguard for my private data? Creating a separate user, which Alfred does not have access to? Some other approach?

Thanks!

Alfred seems awesome, and  I appreciate the help!