ctwise

 

Hey,

 

I’m trying to have control Focus.app from Alfred. I found some scripts that should work on the developper’s GitHub.

I just don’t know how to write them in Alfred nor in the Terminal.

 

Here’s the script:

#!/bin/bash
open focus://focus

And here’s my Workflow so far.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Create a keyword trigger (or hotkey trigger, or whatever you prefer), then create a run script action with 'open focus://focus' in the script box (don't enter the quotes in the box). Oh, and connect the trigger to the run script action.

Hi Guys,

 

I am new to Alfred, I just recently came across quite a few recommendations from various websites and reviews mentioned there on this interesting APP. Though I have some initial idea on what Alfred does. Still I am not able to figure out or understand how is it gonna be different from the MAC OS X "Spotlight" because even Spotlight seems to be doing very much the same thing Already that Alfred promises to do, so how is Alfred different and what does it do more than what MAC OS X Spotlight does not do ? As a first time user, I am just trying to understand how can this APP help me ?  Does anyone here maybe the Admin, Moderators or the Founder of this APP do you guys have like a comparison sheet between what the MAC OS X Spotlight does and what does Alfred do in addition to that ? Also if you guys have any video showing the remarkable features of Alfred it would be more easier to understand.

 

Thanks

The intention of Alfred (and other launchers) is to allow you to control your computer from the keyboard. The basic stuff includes:

- Stuff like Spotlight (launch applications, open files, enter calculations).

- File manipulation (list files in directories, delete files, etc.).

- Web searches (Wikipedia, IMDB, Amazon, etc.)

- Search contacts

- Clipboard history

- iTunes player

- System command (empty trash, eject disk, quit app, etc.)

At it's simplest it's Spotlight+. It's faster for launching apps, it's more configurable, and if you buy the power pack you can take it to the next level.

You don't have to know how to program to use workflows. Take a look at http://www.packal.org for workflows that other people have built and shared.

Pre-existing workflows let you search various sites and get search results back in the Alfred window, create quick notes or reminders, toggle bluetooth and many other things.

It appears to be broken on Yosemite.  Anyone else seeing that as well?

I won't be installing Yosemite until the public release, so I won't be able to check or fix the problem until then.

You can find a version of this workflow on Packal - https://github.com/packal/repository/raw/master/com.tedwise.vpn/vpn_toggle.alfredworkflow

I might have used the workflow in this thread as the base, I honestly don't remember.

Alfred Preferences -> Default Results -> Search Scope box -- Add '/opt/homebrew-cask/Caskroom' to the list

What a great improvement compared to older versions 

 

I know this is not the goal of this workflow, but is there a way to display the associated keyboard shortcut to the menu entry?

 

For example in Alfred Preferences: "Select All" -> "Cmd-A".

The latest version will display keyboard shortcuts. This is _not reliable_ due to the way keyboard shortcuts are handled by some apps. It's why I didn't display them for the longest time. So take them with a grain of salt.

Automatic Software Updates took Microsoft Remote Desktop to version 8.0.9 a few nights ago and now this workflow is not working correctly.

It's probably the version update window that Microsoft insists on showing with every new point release. Run the app normally and click the button that says, 'don't show this update window again'. The workflow should start working again after that. Unfortunately, this workflow will continue to be 'brittle' until Microsoft specifically supports scripting the app.

Okay.. did a restart an now all three machines are in the list. 

but wehen I select one of them.. VMWare is doing something and it sounds like it starts the machine but the VMWare Fusion Windows does not open. Nothing to see. I have to start VMWare app an then the window with the already running VM pops up. strange..  any idea? thx in advance.

VMWare Fusion Version 6.0.4 (1887983)

It's because of line 44 in main.rb:

A new version that fixes the issue has been uploaded to Packal - https://github.com/packal/repository/raw/master/com.tedwise.vmwarecontrol/vmware_control.alfredworkflow

Hope somebody can help.

What can I do when the Workflow is not showing and of my three VM in the list?

When I use the "vm start" and hit enter, there is no selection anymore.

I deleted the workflow and reinstalled it but that did not fix the problem.

 

What exists is

~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmInventory

http://bit.ly/1sigdiA

 

What exists but looks empty  /Library/Application Support/VMware/VMware Fusion/Shared/vmInventory

http://bit.ly/1qGiL6U

 

thanks in advance.

Not sure why that happened. I'm not a VMWare expert. :-)

This knowledge base article says you can remove the file and restart VMWare to recreate it - http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2031100

There's also something online about registering VMWare instances to add them to the file, not sure how to go about that though.

ctwise, when I try to add a task it automatically gives it a priority of 9 and start and due dates of today.  Is there a way to leave those as blank?

The way it's written - no. You can override the priority and date but you can't leave them blank. You'll have to edit the script to do that.

Every application on OS/X uses those symbols. You may not have noticed them, but open any menu on OS/X and you can see the key equivalents use them. Go to Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts and you'll see them again. Use any application that allows you to set keys, same story. This isn't an Alfred thing, it's a OS/X application thing. Here's a link with more symbols used in OS/X: http://tedwise.com/2009/04/28/what-do-those-weird-mac-symbols-mean/

The more power-user applications you use, the more you'll see those symbols.

Ever since Microsoft released a new major version - 8.0 - the RDP workflow has been completely broken. Microsoft, for reasons known only to them, removed the ability to _search_ the defined servers. Since they don't provide an AppleScript dictionary for the app, the only way to script opening a specific server was to use the search function, so the workflow was broken.

Microsoft just released 8.0.8 which finally adds the search functionality _back_ into the application. The workflow still didn't work so it needed to be tweaked to the new UI. Everything is back to working normally now for the workflow. You can find it on Packal:

http://www.packal.org/workflow/microsoft-remote-desktop

Keep in mind that even though this is working the same way it always did before, it's still fragile since it uses UI scripting since there's no exposed scripting support. That means that a new version pop-up window will stop the workflow from working and having focus on a remote desktop instead of the main application will also stop the workflow from working. Until Microsoft adds scripting support, this is the best I can do.

I'm trying to get Alfred to launch Lightroom when I type "LR". But when I type in LR, it only gives me two options, neither of which is Lightroom. Likewise I'd like to assign PS to Photoshop, but it's not an option when I enter PS. What do I need to do to force Alfred assign an action to a specific keyword?

 

Thanks!

 

John

Settings -> Advanced -> Apps Matching -> Full fuzzy match from word boundary

Then PS will match Photoshop.

Or, you can create a simple workflow that connects the keyword 'PS' to Photoshop and 'LR' to Lightroom.

@david, that was awesome

what did you hit to get the first paste window to open?

 

 

snippets: i use type it for me at the moment

i have keywords stored. so, if i type "]keyword" (with the right square bracket first)...

then my keyword gets typed as soon as i hit space or enter

 

does alfred work in the same way?

 

thanks

Alfred doesn't monitor your typing in apps, snippets are only accessible through Alfred. If you want "]keyword" to expand in other apps you need to continue using another product. The benefit to Alfred's approach is getting a list of snippets.

It appears alfred doesn't check the directories (I have an exchange account setup for work and it adds "Exchange Global Address List" to the Directories section of the Contacts app and from there I can search for people) if it can't find a matching contact.

 

This would be very useful as then I could e-mail anyone in the company just by knowing their name and not have to pollute my address book with their contacts.

I agree with your basic premise but "pollute" is a strong word. :-) I still pull in everyone I email with at my company into my local address book because I can link them with their LinkedIn profiles using CoBook. Let's me associate pictures with the majority of my contacts and have long-term contact info for them if they leave the company.

I just looked through the programming guide for LaunchBar 6 "actions" which are their equivalent of workflows. Alfred, in general, has more comprehensive workflow support (not even counting the GUI layout tool), but LaunchBar 6 has some features it would be nice to see in Alfred:

That's why I hate it. The syntax is incomprehensible.

 

I wonder how fast JavaScript will run as a scripting language. The scripting bridge is hideously slow. Fingers crossed they've done something about that, but I'd be surprised if JS runs noticeably faster than AS, regardless of how fast JS VMs have become.

 

Do you know anything about Apple's JS runtime? I'm guessing it won't have the kind of IO features etc. that node does.

The comparison isn't JavaScriptCore to Node, it's JavaScriptCore to V8. There is at least one implementation of Node.js on top of JavaScriptCore, not sure how usable it is though. I'd very much like to see a benchmark of Node.js on top of Yosemite's JavaScriptCore.

Wouldn't have been my first (or even fourth) choice as a new scripting language of OS X, but it sure is a massive improvement on AppleScript.

 

Man, I hate that language. This is one time I'll be happy to reimplement loads of my code in a new language.

I don't hate AppleScript but I've never been able to completely understand it's syntax. I always have to experiment to fully understand how to use an app's dictionary of functions and properties. JavaScript, on the other hand, is very, very clear, extremely flexible, and thanks to the browser wars, very fast.

Will Alfred need to specifically accommodate the change, though? I seem to recall reading that said javascript would be executed via osascript, anyway, so it should work as is.

I believe it will. I'm not sure if NSAppleScript will run JavaScript. The screenshots of the Script Editor show the user having to select either AppleScript or JavaScript.

Take a look at this link:

https://t.co/Y9TDhanIA7

Yosemite supports using JavaScript instead of AppleScript as a scripting language. It's a complete replacement with all of the same features and integrations with Objective-C frameworks. You can run it with osascript, etc.

Since I'm posting this in the feature suggestions you can guess what I'm requesting when Alfred is run on Yosemite. :-)

If it's the sublime-workspace files you're interested in, create a File Filter than only shows that kind of file (possibly restricting the search scope, as well, if necessary). I do this with sublime-project files.

If you want to search specific subfolders only, use the above-mentioned Fuzzy Folders workflow. Set ~/Dropbox/Projects/Publishing as a Fuzzy Folder (with, say, .p as the keyword), and add *.zip to the excludes list. Using your fake examples, .p 3 <query> would only show matches within project3.

If you provided more realistic data and were more specific in exactly what you're trying to find, I might be able to provide more useful advice.

Don't get me wrong, if what we're discussing never gets implemented, I'm fine with that, slightly less happy then if it _does_ get implemented, but still fine. However, it would be awesome if filtering worked _everywhere_ a filename is accepted.

Like I said before, if you could provide a globbing pattern, then the base filename could be sent through spotlight and then Alfred itself could filter down the results using the path globbing pattern. So entering 'myproj/**/readme.txt' would send 'readme.txt' through spotlight and then the results would be filtered _by Alfred_ using the 'myproj/**' globbing pattern. You go from hundreds of results to just a handful and it requires very little additional work.

The fundamental reason Alfred doesn't provide this kind of search by default is that the OS X metadata server doesn't have context of the path as part of the search parameters, he only knows the path as part of the results returned to him. For performance (including memory) reasons, Alfred asks OS X for the most likely matches for a file given a set of constrains and knowledge, which is a subset of all matches (which could be thousands). As such, he can't subsequently filter through the paths and return the items you want as this would inevitably be missing some which didn't make the initial cut of results.

 

i.e. you may have 1000 files named 'cafe', but Alfred is only getting the first 50 most likely matches from OS X and could only then filter through the paths for that. This would lead to confusing behaviour as the file you are looking for falls in the 950 which didn't match most likely and therefore you get no results.

 

One fix could be that Alfred does his own indexing, but this would turn Alfred into a big fat bloaty beast... something I'm not willing to allow when using OS X's very mature indexing engine provides perfect file searching for 99.9% of users.

 

Have you tried filtering and navigating through Alfred's file system navigation? If you know the exact location you want, you can actually get to that file extremely quickly, especially if you start with a file filter for folders (one of the built in workflow examples).

 

In your [Norris] case, you would use the file filter to search for e.g. Vacations, then use cmd+down to enter file system navigation, start typing "Paris", press enter to select the folder when you see it, then start typing 'sitting'. The file system navigation works like bash, so you can even use wildcards like *in*cafe.

 

Cheers,

Andrew

Right, and filtering the results doesn't increase the number of results being returned, it changes which ones are being displayed.

So, entering:

    open python.framework/examples/pyobjc/guitests/readme.txt

would be the functional equivalent of this:

    mdfind name:readme.txt | grep -i python.framework/examples/pyobjc/guitests

and far, far more useful then this:

    open readme.txt

In general, where Spotlight is being used as a search source, it would be extremely useful to be able to control that searching more directly using Spotlight syntax, e.g., 'tag:x', 'name:x', etc. in addition to adding filtering.

Anyone ?

Anyone ?

tell application "Alfred 2"

    search "whatever you want in the box"

end tell

David, just as Tyler - you're imagining it as a "new kind of a search" that is very complicated and very specific. It's not.

When I type "open changelog" right now I see:

 

 

See? The Paths are already there! All the necessary info for the filter is already there! 

All I want is a way to filter by the paths already available to me. That's why I wrote it in the feature suggestions. All the other ways are "workarounds" that require me to tag, categorize, etc. before I can act, but a filter like this would be very easy to add on and make a huge difference.

 

I don't think you're going to get this. It would mean changing "modes" into one that filters the results list by whatever you start typing. For example, you have your list of files, you change into filter "mode" and type text that's in the path of the entry you want, reducing the list down to that file.

The approach that's much more "Alfred" is to change the query. Unfortunately, as you've already discovered, the query is literal when it should allow globbing. Following your example, if I type 'open changelog' and get a loooong list of files, I want to narrow it down to one that's below the 'sails' directory, so I _want_ to be able to type something like this 'open **/sails/**/changelog.md' but the best I can get is 'open changelog.md' and then paging through _lots_ of results.

So, the feature _I_ would like, is that Alfred searches by the full path unless it contains globbing characters. If it does, search by the file name and filter by the globbing pattern. From the user's perspective it would look like Alfred was searching by a globbing pattern but it would be much more efficient and performant for Alfred.