ctwise

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

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.

Create a workflow, trigger it with a keyword that requires an argument, connect it to run a script, choose Ruby as the script language, and paste this in:
 
path = "{query}" unc = "" if (path.start_with?('smb:')) # smb://NetworkDrive.corp.YYYY.com/Files/Folder/Folder parts = path.split('//') # ["smb:", "NetworkDrive.corp.YYYY.com/Files/Folder/Folder"] path_parts = parts[1].split('/') # ["NetworkDrive.corp.YYYY.com", "Files", "Folder", "Folder"] server_parts = path_parts[0].split('.') # ["NetworkDrive", "corp", "YYYY", "com"] unc = "\\\\#{server_parts[0]}\\#{path_parts[1..-1].join('\\')}" else # afp://NetworkDrive/Folder/Folder/ parts = path.split('//') # ["afp:", "NetworkDrive/Folder/Folder"] path_parts = parts[1].split('/') # ["NetworkDrive", "Files", "Folder", "Folder"] unc = "\\\\#{path_parts.join('\\')}" end puts unc  
Then connect a copy to clipboard output (or large type or whatever else you like) to the script.

I edited my reply since I forgot the require statement. Try the updated code.

Create a workflow, trigger it with a keyword that requires an argument, connect it to run a script, choose Ruby as the script language, and paste this in:
 
path = "{query}" unc = "" if (path.start_with?('smb:')) # smb://NetworkDrive.corp.YYYY.com/Files/Folder/Folder parts = path.split('//') # ["smb:", "NetworkDrive.corp.YYYY.com/Files/Folder/Folder"] path_parts = parts[1].split('/') # ["NetworkDrive.corp.YYYY.com", "Files", "Folder", "Folder"] server_parts = path_parts[0].split('.') # ["NetworkDrive", "corp", "YYYY", "com"] unc = "\\\\#{server_parts[0]}\\#{path_parts[1..-1].join('\\')}" else # afp://NetworkDrive/Folder/Folder/ parts = path.split('//') # ["afp:", "NetworkDrive/Folder/Folder"] path_parts = parts[1].split('/') # ["NetworkDrive", "Files", "Folder", "Folder"] unc = "\\\\#{path_parts.join('\\')}" end puts unc  
Then connect a copy to clipboard output (or large type or whatever else you like) to the script.

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.

Do you have this checked in Settings?
 

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.

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

The previously released menu search workflow has been universally panned due to the poor performance of the AppleScript that dumps menu contents. The caching of results worked very poorly as a stop-gap. So, I've re-written the menu extraction in Objective-C. It's much faster. The source is here: https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows
 
You can download the workflow directly from http://tedwi.se/u/db
 
To recap, this workflow lets you trigger an application's menu's from Alfred. For example, if you're in iTerm and trigger Alfred, you can type 'm view' to get a list of all menu items with 'view' in the name or that belong to the 'view' menu. Selecting one of the entries triggers the corresponding menu entry in iTerm. In one sense it gives you a command-line to control your applications.
 
The workflow has the beginnings of shortcut key display as well but it's currently disabled due to numerous bugs.
 
Update: 
 
v1.3 - Provide error message when assistive devices isn't checked.
v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.
v1.1 - I fixed the bug with Alfred not remembering selections and added AlleyOop support. Download from the same link.
 
Requires OS/X 10.7+.
 
---
 
You need to turn on OS/X assistive device support to allow this workflow to operate. You can find the checkbox in Settings. The settings page looks very different in recent versions of OS/X but the wording for providing access for assistive devices is very similar no matter what OS/X version you're using. Here's an image of the settings from the latest version of Mountain Lion.
 

Simple workflow that shows Time Machine status and lets you start and stop a backup. Download from here - http://tedwi.se/u/dc
 

Or you can just create a workflow. Setup three keywords (that take no argument) and attach each to a unique action to Launch Apps. Drag the application you want to launch into each Launch Apps action. Problem solved.

VPN Toggle - Sebastian Schöps - http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/191-workflow-for-vpn-services/

Dev Doctor - Syd Lawrence - http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1420-dev-doctor-documentation-autosuggest-search/