mklement0

Cool, thanks - great idea to generalize it.

Very nice.
 
Suggestion: add support for US-style feet-and-inches specs., commonly used in (human) height measurement; common forms are:
 
5ft 7in 
5'7
5'7"
 
Also, how about showing the unit categories even before a number is typed? That would enable direct browsing of them.

A better unit converter
 

 
 
 Download V0.6
contact thijs@designandsuch.com for questions, bugs, ideas and such
 
try out the demo
 
 
 
 
There are more unit converters available. but i didn't like the lack of speed due to the feeds. Thus i redid one myself which calculates everything on your mac. It fetches new currency data once in a while.. that's the only time when a second delay might appear. And in my humble opinion it's already better than all other unit converters around.
 
I might add more units in the future but so far it has:
 
- 7 units temperature  ( celsius, kelvin, fahrenheit etc. )
- 21 units on length  ( km, miles, nautical miles etc. )
- 15 units on weight   ( kg, lb, etc. )
- 8 units on time ( days, hours, years months etc )
- 18 units on digital memory ( GB, MB TB bytes, kilobytes etc )
- 5 units on speed ( km/h, miles per hour etc.
- 90 units on currencies ( euro, dollar, pounds, dinar etc. )
 
that's 164 units
 
 
It has a nice blind rating system. so the more you choose for one answer, the more it will be likely that that one shows up in the suggestions.  
Automatic updates from a currency xml file  
I am working on an automatic update on the whole workflow so i could add new features while you use it. But that is not finished yet.. and i thought.. let's start sharing maybe ill get some nice feedback for possible cool ideas.  
* designed the icons myself, probably could work some more on those too.  
 
 
it doesn't need explanation...
if you'll just start typing
"5 kilometer to miles..."
or something you will figure out how it works.
 
some screenshots:
 
 
 
 

Uni Call is an open source project and an Alfred workflow providing the fastest way to make whatever audio, video phone call or send whatever text message on your Mac OS X (ambitious . It views your Apple Contacts (we love Apple address book and iCloud as the central place for all your contact information, and makes use of those information to help you initiate your phone calls or text messages as quickly as possible.
 
Please visit Uni Call's official project site (http://unicall.guiguan.net) for more details.

Note from Andrew: While this is a convenient method for updating workflows, I cannot endorse the use of it unless you are fully aware of the security implications of blanket updating all of your workflows. I'm currently working on a built in workflow auto-updater, for a future Alfred 2 release, that performs the standard verification checks that Alfred currently does on manual import, along with migrating your hotkey/keyword settings on upgrading. I'll also be adding 3rd party workflow developer signatures to keep you safe.
 
Hey all,
I've just completed a workflow designed to make it easier for workflow developers to push updates to their work. (And to their flows.) It's called Alleyoop, it's based very heavily on the concept behind David's old extension updater, and it works a little something like this:
When you enter the query oop, it searches through the workflow folders for files named update.json. update.json indicates what version of the workflow is currently installed and where to check for an update. (The format is below.) Alleyoop downloads a remote json file, indicated in update.json, and if that file indicates a higher version, it downloads the workflow at the address given by the remote file. The user finds the workflow in his or her ~/Downloads directory and opens it. There is no step 4. Workflow developers can start implementing this workflow immediately. All you need is a static place to host a json file and an alfredworkflow file—so Github will do, failing all else, but Droplr won't. Place an update.json file in your workflow, with the following keys defined:
 
{ "version": 1.0, "remote_json": "http://alfred.daniel.sh/Updates/Things.json" }  
version should be a float, meaning that 1.0 and 1.1 and 3.14159 are all valid, but 3.1.4 is not, and remote_json should point to a json file on a remote server that's defined like this:
{ "version": 1.5, "download_url": "http://alfred.daniel.sh/Workflows/Things.alfredworkflow", "description": "Brief description of the update." }  
If the version on the remote server is greater than the version on the user's computer, s/he'll see something like this:

 
Selecting a workflow from the list will download it. No fuss, no muss.
 
And that's it! Enjoy implementing this, until we get a good package manager running again, and let me know if you run into any difficulties.
 
Download Here

In another thread (http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/792-alfred-applescript-dictionary-installed-multiple-times/), a solution was posted for a problem in which AppleScript dictionaries would have multiple entries. These duplicates don't have any effect on your system, and removing them doesn't either.
 
Here you go: https://github.com/shawnrice/alfred2-workflow-remove-dup-applescript-dicts/raw/master/Clean%20AS%20Dictionaries.alfredworkflow
 
There's just one command: "clean dict"
 
Github repo: https://github.com/shawnrice/alfred2-workflow-remove-dup-applescript-dicts
 
(Now with Alleyoop support).

I think every Alfred power-user is keyboard Geek. We want to navigate through OS X using keyboard shortcuts as much as possible because it is fast as hell comparing with mouse actions. So why don’t make navigating through Alfred Preferences tabs faster by using keyboard shortcuts to switch them? I really like the idea of switching tabs in Mac App Store app using Cmd+1 … Cmd+5.

Right now, if Alfred has an Error in the XML it receives or cannot parse due to encoding problems, it will just not parse it.
 
Could you please add a "show errors/debug" checkbox for workflows, so that these parsing errors are displayed as XML replies? It would make creating extensions and more importantly remote debugging strange problems a LOT easier!
 
Also, a minor one: if you use python and do
print u"some string containing üäöàéè", Alfred will simply ignore it, while the same as a non unicode string works. 

Many scripts that rely on external sources like web services or databases need some considerable time to evaluate.  As Alfred will always send the content of the currently selected Item if you press enter, it can only submit what has been entered up to the last successful evaluation of the script. Now for scripts where you input text, e.g. a chat message, where upon pressing enter you want to do something with that message, even if processing it has not finished yet, it would be super useful if you can access the content of the input line from the ScriptFilter in the Script, maybe as {input}. 
 
(My current usecase is implementing skyping via Alfred, I display the last messages between the user and the currently selected friend as items, it really does not matter which one is selected to submit the message, however it is super important that the complete input string is sent to the script so it can be sent to skype, as otherwise parts of the messages will be missing. Unfortunately the SQLite query to fetch said data takes a while (maybe 50 to 100ms), enough to consistently eat my smilies or at least their mouths, which is a horrible thing to do to smilies I think this should be relatively simple to implement and provide a huge benefit to Alfred, namely be able to chat with it fluently. (Or write E-Mails, or...) )
 
(This a result of this thread: http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1416-incomplete-query/)

It'd be nice if the displayed notifications (from the output action) could have a configurable action on click, like many notifications from other applications have.

Please add ⌘+F in the Alfred Preferences window to search for workflows.

Hey there,
 
I've recently centralized all of my music on one of my computers that acts as a server. I have been using the itunes "shared libraries" feature to access it from my laptop and it works great. Only problem is I can't use Alfred mini player anymore since it only works with local libraries... I don't know if it is feasible but it would be awesome.
 
Thanks for the great work!

You're obviously doing some URL detection at some point, it would be nice to have that be a Trigger available in Workflows so you can add custom actions to URLs (Send URL Workflow starts this, but is more concerned with pulling URLS from running apps instead of being able to manage typed/pasted URLs).

When searching workflows the search should be fuzzy and not just match the first character.  Especially important since everything has been turned into a workflow.

Yes, that is a good point.
 
I think one possible solution would be for Alfred to provide 2 environment variables to all scripts it executes: $ALFRED_CACHE and $ALFRED_CONFIG. They would be set up to point to the volatile and non-volatile app data directories (including the bundle id). By default $ALFRED_CONFIG would point to the regular ~/Library/Application Support/... folder, but if the user sets a Sync Folder, then these config directories will be moved to a subdirectory of the sync folder.  The $ALFRED_CACHE setting however would continue to point to ~/Library/Caches/...
 
It should be the responsibility of the workflow to create the actual cache and/or config directories because not every workflow needs them; Alfred would just provide the paths, but the workflow has to execute `mkdir -p "$ALFRED_CONFIG"` before creating any files in them.
 
I don't have an opinion (yet) what should happen if the workflow doesn't have a bundle id. Maybe the $ALFRED_* variables should then not be set at all?
 
A side benefit of this scheme is that workflow code doesn't need to embed the bundle id to create these directory paths themselves; changing the bundle id via the Alfred GUI would be enough to change them.

example: Is it possible for helper variables for [volatile] and [non-volatile] to be added to Alfred that get expanded to the path of the relevant directory including the bundleID before the scripts are run?
 
So if I used it in the Drupal workflow that I'm building they would be expanded to the following before any scripts containing them were run..
 
[volatile] = '/Users/brian/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-2/Workflow Data/com.realityloop.alfreddrupalworkflow'
 
[non-volatile] = /Users/brian/Library/Application Support/Alfred 2/Workflow Data/com.realityloop.alfreddrupalworkflow

Hey,
I suggested this feature back in v1 already, but thought of maybe suggesting it again, hoping it would be added to Alfred 2 sometime.
 
From the file action menu there's no option to rename a file. I can't think it would be that hard to incorporate into Alfred in a nice fashion.
 
This can be done in a workflow I believe, but it would be made in a really "ugly" fashion (like the color labeling workflow here, which re-invokes Alfred after the action is selected), and it's such a useful thing that I think it should be a part of Alfred itself.
 
Please add this to Alfred.
 
Thanks,
Ben

I would like to request the addition of version numbers for Alfred Workflows. As developers expand the workflows, I think it would be nice for them to be able to set the version number so it's easier to see what version  you have and what version a developer has released. If added to the Bundle ID / Created By / Website, I think that would be nice. If displayed in small darker grey print next to the workflow name, that would be nice and easy, out of the way, and of value to both users, developers and you (as you can see if they are using an out of date workflow, etc.)
 
Thanks! I hope to see this soon!

The reason is that some workflow requires a bit of time to run. and some of them related to monitoring, notes and tasks can be useful to just pin on the top for a while.

Would it be possible to have the ability to edit scripts in workflows in an editor of our choice?
 
Perhaps having one added option in Alfred's prefs to select an 'editor' ... then, when we double click on the script in a workflow, having a button (perhaps beside "open workflow folder") that says "Edit in External Editor."
 
This would leave the default alone for quick and dirty stuff, yet allow others to load/modify the scripting in any of the multitude of editors out there that have all the color coding, command references and all that jive.
 
I for one find it a 'tiny' but of a pain having to resize that window every time just to find a line I need to reference. Also, being VERY new to scripts and such, I DO tend to find the color coding helpful at times.

There are lots of issues reported with scripts that fire for each keystroke and new feature options discussed, e.g., delay script firing until the user stops typing for x milliseconds. Here's another option that might work better and be simpler to implement. Provide support for script filters that are only run once. Then Alfred will be responsible for comparing the search text against the script results. For example:
 
item 1: cooking
item 2: cleaning
item 3: shopping
 
The user triggers the script filter. The script filter returns its complete list of items. The user keeps typing and enters 'c'. Alfred displays only items 1 & 2. The user then enters 'cl' and Alfred displays only item 2.
 
For script filters that need the query to get any results, this wouldn't be an option. For script filters that generate a complete list and then filter the results themselves, it would be. Alfred can also support fuzzy matching this way. The biggest benefit would be performance. If I have a script filter that returns results in milliseconds, it won't matter. But, if I have a script filter that takes a second or two, it will perform much, much better if I only have to fire the script once at the beginning of typing.
 
Obviously, the item title should be searchable but it's an open question whether the sub-title should be as well or whether it should be a checkbox.

It would require shuffling around the system calls, but in all fairness, Windows 7+ has an integrated feature very similar to Spotlight. In fact indexing has been around since at least Windows 2000.
The bigger issues would probably be the UI and other OS-level integration points. The sheer number of them overall, depending on the architecture could be pretty staggering. I'd love to have Alfred be cross-platform as well, but I can see that it might be difficult.
 
Launchy is cross-platform and looks superficially similar: http://www.launchy.net/ I used to use SlickRun on windows: http://bayden.com/slickrun/ On Linux Krunner is built into KDE. There's gnome Do but its more similar to Quicksilver. There's also Synapse for Gnome.  Check out AlternativeTo for more possibilities: http://alternativeto.net/software/alfred/?platform=windows

I created a workflow to display the current date and time in a configurable format.
Pressing enter will copy to clipboard.
 

 
You can also add and subtract time. Examples:
date 3w: today + 3 weeks date -2y: today - 2 years date 2m -5d: today + 2 months - 5 days View GitHub for more details.
 
Direct Download.

I know what you mean, but could Alfred provide API for workflow to use the built-in fuzzy search algorithm? So that workflow developers can consider themselves in using it or not.

+1. (Sadly, this problem has been around a long time and only recently, after a long period of languishing, has received a bit of attention with the added option of escaping backslashes.)
 
In particular, a single, aggregate option to escape the entire query for use in bash would be great.
 
As of Alfred 2.0.3, one has to jump through the following hoops to achieve that:
 
Opt to escape ONLY the following characters in Alfred:Backquotes Double Quotes Backslashes Dollars Use double-quoting to refer to query: "{query}"  
 
Incidentally, if you want to play interactively with how the shell escapes strings, use: 
  printf '%q\n' 'inputString'. 
 
Similarly, Applescript's "quoted form of" can be used to experiment:
 
  quoted form of "Honey\\(`sweetie`), I'm $HOME."
 
Here's a piece of text that can serve as test input to see if it can be passed through without any modification (e.g., by echoing {query} and redirecting to a file): 
 
It ain't "easy".
a\b \\server
a|b & more
test: `ls`; also: $( ls )
$HOME, sweet \$HOME - \a!