Search the Community

[I originally posted this on Reddit, but I'm posting again here to make sure that it's seen.] The tool itself is fine. Good improvements, but mostly invisible. My kids don't even know how to use the computer when they use a Mac without Alfred. Incredible software! I've been a user since 1.0 and a PowerPack user for just as long. Before that I used the Google task launcher thing, and before that, QuickSilver. What I'm interested in is a thriving workflow community. If you want to find workflows, you need to search too many places. Packal and Pacmax seem abandoned. You have the forums, Reddit, and random guesses in GitHub search. Consider the following to be feedback for improving the next generation of Alfred: Make it easier for users to get started: Enable them to click a link for a workflow, and have Alfred be the default handler instead of forcing me to download, find it, double-click it. Enable developers to define a setup flow, with some kind of standard UI. For example, I use a workflow for searching Atlassian Confluence wiki software (for work). Instead of having to type `confluence username` and `confluence password`, provide an up-front UI where a developer can ask these questions, and the user can answer them. This UI should be triggered the first time the user attempts to use the workflow (e.g., I type confluence, and the default option in an un-setup state is to start the setup). There should also be a way to validate these values before completing the setup (e.g., authentication to remote service was successful). One of the options in this UI would be to choose which keyword should be used to trigger it. The developer can provide a default, and the user can always go into preferences and change it, but being able to override the default keyword early would be a nice touch. For example, when installing the `pwgen` workflow, I always change the keyword to `pwd` because I can type it faster. Enable me to create different instances of the same workflow with slightly different configurations and map them to different keywords. For a concrete example, I want to have one instance of the Confluence workflow that searches ALL content (e.g., mapped to `conf {query}`), and another instance that can target a specific team's Confluence space (e.g., mapped to `team {query}`). Same workflow; slightly different configuration (in this case, search scope). If I search for something, but there are no results (or an error, or whatever), don't automatically fall-back to the catch-all options. If you recognize the keyword, have the top result say that there was a problem, and enable some way to view the logs and/or open the project in Finder. Perhaps this would be hidden behind an "I am a developer" checkbox in the preferences or something. Some kind of (better?) indicator in the UI when a workflow is waiting on the network. When I develop workflows, here's what would make it easier/better: Optimize some integrations with GitHub (first), then BitBucket or GitLab (after). Leverage things like topics (GitHub) and pull those in. Standardize on things like `alfred-v4` or `alfred-v3`, and `alfred-lang-php` or `alfred-lang-go`. Have a simple, built-in way to lookup and download any updates to workflows. First-party hooks, please. The solutions coming from the community don't last, and I'm tired of the churn. Make it easy to save credentials/secrets to the (encrypted) system keychain instead of making me write them (unencrypted) to disk. First-party hooks, please. Something like I say that this field is a secret and it should have a particular name. Alfred accepts the secret and stores it without me being able to see it. Integrate sanely with the macOS system logging, so that I can easily read errors in the Console.app. Make it easy for people to discover how to find the project and/or development code. Maybe something like `{keyword}?` (e.g., `conf?`) for easily discovering metadata about a workflow? Make it easy for people to report bugs/issues and send the developer some kind of debug/diagnostic data. Define strong standards/conventions that I can follow when creating workflows, so that you can read them and present them to users, without me having to duplicate my effort. One example is to leverage GitHub topics (mentioned above) and just pull them in to a centralized database of workflows. Why submit manually to another website when you can search the API and auto-populate data for a workflow to show to users? Right now, the results are always a single set of options (analogous to the HTML <select> field). I would love to be able to set up the equivalent of an HTML <optgroup> in the results — a way to group them. For example, "here are the exact matches, then here are the fuzzy matches). HTML <optgroup> is an exact grouping (i.e., one group, then the next group). The group could have a label defined which provides instructions. Something like "Choose a language…". (Provide a link in the docs which point to Apple's HIG so that people know how the ellipsis character should be used in menus and buttons.) Having a way to add an icon to the left/right-edge that is vertically/horizontally centered and not inline with the other text would be a good way to flag certain results as standing out. For example, here are the search results from hub.docker.com. These are from the community, but these (with a star/checkbox/smiley-face on the left-edge) are official. I haven't looked at the multi-level query stuff yet, and you may have already done this, but supporting/auto-completing enums after the keyword would be awesome. Also wrapping enums in the previous suggestion as a group with a label, to allow developers to provide more context, would be awesome. Different versions of macOS include different versions of language runtimes (and Apple's documentation says that language runtimes will stop shipping by default in upcoming versions of macOS). There should be a way for the developer to specify binaries (detected by /usr/bin/env is preferable over hard-coding a path, like many hash-bangs) and versions that are required to run. This should be validated at install time, not at run-and-fail-time. If the current system does not meet the requirements, then the developer should be able to provide instructions and/or a setup script that can be run by Alfred (with user confirmation + sudo password, if necessary) to install any prerequisites. So, an install-time script to detect, and a setup script which can install missing dependencies. All would happen during this hypothetical "Setup" wizard. Some kind of package signing. Public/private key? GPG? User-facing warnings about installing unsigned workflows. Don't need to go full-scale notarization (yet), but let's see what the ecosystem does as a result. Streaming results. We define the format of the individual results, and as data comes back (e.g., fetching API results across pagination), we can append/prepend/overwrite results. `fzf` is an example of a CLI tool that can update results as new data streams in. Being able to filter those streaming results in real-time with fuzzy-matching would be mind-blowing. Some kind of background/async support. Example of background support: I install a workflow which lets me keep an eye on stock prices. This workflow has the ability to watch a particular stock, and can send a notification when it crosses a threshold or moves so many percentage points up/down. To me, background == polling/scheduled/cron-ish, but maybe I'm not thinking big enough. Example of async support: I want to use Alfred's file selection support to find a directory containing FLAC audio files, then pass that directory (or files) to a workflow which calls out to FFMPEG and converts them all to MP3 @ 96kbps (muah-hah-hah!). When the task is complete, I would get a notification. When clicked, Alfred would open with a new selection of MP3 files that I can take the next action on (open in iTunes/Apple Music/QuickTime Player). A single, canonical place to find reasonably-curated workflows. Preferably owned and maintained first-party. Yes, it means running some servers and doing some work to curate. Not sure how practical that is for a small team, but it's necessary. When I look for workflows, here is what I want to know: What are the user ratings? (this means finding an easy way to enable users to rate the workflows they use and collect that anonymized data) What language(s) is this written in? (Can I contribute or hack at it if I want? What language do I need to know? Do I have that runtime installed?) What version of Alfred is this optimized for? (The first results on Packal are ≥ 5 years old) How many workflows of the exact same thing already exist? (Should I re-think writing my own and just use or contribute to an existing one?) Is this maintained? Is this maintained by a trusted developer? Or just some dude on the Internet somewhere? What new (or newly-updated) workflows are available which support (a) the latest version of Alfred, (b) whatever cool new feature of Alfred, (c) some other notable thing? Apple's App Store does this and it's a great way to find the signal amidst the noise.