The State of Alfred Remote app

[HRD]

All that is needed is a definitive response from @Andrew

[deanishe]

7 hours ago, HRD said:

All that is needed is a definitive response from @Andrew

 

That's what I'm asking: why do you think it's easy to give a definitive response?

[Andrew]

The simple answer to this is Alfred Remote *will* get a major update, but I can't give you a timescale.

 

To keep Alfred's quality as high as possible, we are extremely selective over which features bring the most value to our wider user base. Alfred Remote constitutes a minor part of this user base, so while we have continued to add features to Remove via updates in Alfred itself, the core Alfred Remote app has remained as is.

 

While it would be nice to do a minor update to Remote to include some of the newer iOS features, Apple has evolved iOS significantly since Remote was originally released, with some technologies deprecated, and some new ones introduced, so Remote would need an overhaul to fit with within Apple's framework and "vision", all while trying to keep Remote backwards compatible with Alfred 3.

 

Over the past number of years, I've been keeping a close eye on Swift and Swift UI, and this may provide a perfect platform for a complete Alfred Remote rewrite, but it could be too early to allow this to work on a wider number of older devices.

 

As I said before, when Alfred Remote version 2 comes out, I'd like to keep it as a free update for all current Alfred Remote users.

[HRD]

@Andrew

 

Thanks for the update on development plans.

[Eran]

I was listening to the 'automators' podcast yesterday where they were talking about their uses for the Elgato Streamdeck. 

They were also discussing the streamdeck iOS Application as well as Metagrid (a 30$ iPad app)

This made me realise Alfred in combination with the remote app could give us almost all the same functionality.

 

I have purchased alfred remote years ago, but have honestly barely used it, but now I think I will start using it again.

When launching it again there were a few things I noticed that I would love to see in an upcoming release

• an in-app option to keep the screen awake ( I know that this can be done globally in system setting, but it would make sense to do this per app IMO)
• ability to change icon sizes / increase number of icons
• contextual screens, show page specific for application / location / time of day 
• ability to hide the sidebar different pages
• add ability to swipe through pages
• quickly add an emoji as icon (like Notion.so does for example)
• Keyboard maestro integration
• per-device configuration (show different content on my iPhone and iPad)
• Automatically set favicon as icon for bookmarks

I think the Alfred remote app has great potential as a modern productivity app, and it deserves to be promoted as such.

Edited November 3, 2020 by Eran

[mikedvzo]

I cannot wait for Alfred Remote to support Siri. I use Alfred remote to lock and unlock my Mac with a shell/AS script and a Keychain password and would love to tell Siri to unlock my Mac. 🙂 

[Blacknoise]

On 11/3/2020 at 6:03 AM, Eran said:

• ability to change icon sizes / increase number of icons
• contextual screens, show page specific for application / location / time of day 

 

+1 for those 2 in particular!
The main one will be to automatically detect the current active application and display a screen associated to it. Would be a killer workflow!

 

I would also add the ability to have nested screens

 

@Eran Regarding Keyboard Maestro, you can already do this by using Applescript (any KM macro can be triggered by applescript)