Add Browser Options for Alfred's Web Bookmarks & Search Features

[Jasondm007]

I would love to see Alfred’s Web Bookmarks and Web Search features allow for alternative browser opening options.

 

Like most people these days, I often find myself needing to switch between browsers during the day. Since Alfred’s Web Bookmarks and Web Search features are tied to the user’s default browser (or, in the case of Web Bookmarks, the browser where the bookmarks came from), I have had to create a bunch of workaround workflows. However, I’d love to go back and start using Alfred’s under the hood features again. Alfred’s Web Search, for example, makes it so much easier to see everything than in a bunch of messy workflows.

 

There are a lot of different ways one might implement this functionality, so I thought I’d throw out a few ideas below. I’ve tried to stay within the usual confines, without calling for anything too crazy. However, @Andrew, please feel free to put me in my place if I’m way over the moon with these. As always, thanks for your consideration!

 

Web Bookmarks

• In its “Open Bookmarks” dropdown, add one of the following options:
  • “on a case-by-case basis”: This option would prompt the user to select the browser where they want to open the bookmark each time. This is probably my least favorite option, but I thought I’d go ahead and suggest it. I imagine this could work like a list filter - i.e., where it’d just show the user a list of their installed browsers, and they could select the one they liked.
  • “call external workflow”: This option would just send the url to an external trigger defined by the user. If this option is selected, it would then have to open another dropdown where the user could select the appropriate Trigger ID, etc. This option sounds like it would give users the most control over everything. However, I imagine that it’s also the most complicated.

 

• Add a new “Modifier Key” option with (1) a dropdown that allows users to select a modifier key (e.g., command, option, control, function, shift), and (2) another dropdown that allows users to select a browser that’s installed in its system - much like Alfred’s “Open URL” action does (see screenshot below). All told, this is probably my favorite option because it seems like the least amount of work, and it feels like others options that are presently in Alfred already. If you wanted, you could also add the default options to this dropdown too (e.g., “in macOS default browser” and “in bookmark’s source browser”), or even the first two suggestions above (“on a case-by-case basis” OR “call external workflow”).

 

 

 

• As a quick aside, I would also love to see a Hotkey option added to Web Bookmarks - like below. I understand that you can make a hotkey search using your designated keyword, but I hate having other stuff in my results.

 

 

 

Web Search

• In theory, all of the options from above could work here, too. For example, while it looks a little wonky, here’s a screenshot of how the the “Modifier Key” option might operate.

 

 

• Alternatively, I imagine some people would like to specify this within each individual custom search. I suspect this might make Alfred a little overly bloated, however.

Edited May 11, 2019 by Jasondm007

[deanishe]

31 minutes ago, Jasondm007 said:

Like most people these days, I often find myself needing to switch between browsers during the day

 

I don't think most people actually do that.

 

This sounds like rather a niche feature that's smarter to implement as a separate app set as your default browser, so it works across all applications, and not just in Alfred.

[vitor]

More alternatives:

 

[Jasondm007]

Hi @deanishe and @vitor - Thanks for the third party app suggestions. I was only aware of one of them, so I'll take a look at the others.

 

That said, I was really hoping for an Alfred-based solution that uses these utilities. At the moment, I rely on a bunch of other workflows to accomplish what I need, and it's a lot more messy than just using Alfred's Web Search & Web Bookmark tools. It might be aspirational ... but this is a Feature Suggestion thread after all, right?

[deanishe]

I can certainly see the utility in the suggestion, I just think using an external app gives you even more options. For example, it also works with workflows, not just Alfred's built-in features.

 

If Andrew did add something like that to Alfred, I think it would also be better implemented in a more "universal" way, so that workflows could also use it.

[svinter]

Did anything like this get implemented?

 

I think the easiest and most powerful thing would be to add a "workflow" folder option to the context menu within a workflow (in addition to triggers, inputs, etc.), that lets you choose from all of the "built in" workflows. Then you can integrate any existing built-in workflow into our own workflow. When built-in workflows have default actions (e.g., <return> in a bookmark search automatically opens the URL in a browser), just put that as an uneditable action coming out of the workflow. That way you can add other options easily without interfering with existing behavior. It would require no other UI changes to all of the built-in workflows. 

 

Thoughts?

[Jasondm007]

@svinter Sorry for the slow response.

 

Unfortunately, I don't think there's been any traction with this specific issue or the more broad one, concerning access to built-in workflows. I've begged for this in the context of file actions, a few times, but no luck ... just quite yet.

 

🙏 @Andrew

Edited November 5, 2020 by Jasondm007

[Andrew]

What's most likely to happen here is Alfred will expose the underlying Bookmarks input filter to workflows, so you have more control over configuring and actioning bookmarks.

[Jasondm007]

12 hours ago, Andrew said:

What's most likely to happen here is Alfred will expose the underlying Bookmarks input filter to workflows, so you have more control over configuring and actioning bookmarks.

 

You're the best, @Andrew !!

[Jasondm007]

On 11/6/2020 at 5:05 AM, Andrew said:

What's most likely to happen here is Alfred will expose the underlying Bookmarks input filter to workflows, so you have more control over configuring and actioning bookmarks.

Any chances this coming soon, @Andrew? 🙏️ 

 

Thanks for your consideration!