Alfred 4.5 Beta + Hyperkey == insane productivity

[Chris Messina]

I'm a fan of Ryan Hanson's apps, including Charmstone and Hookshot. He's recently released another app called Hyperkey that is insanely useful for Alfred 4.5's Universal Actions.

 

Specifically, I use Caps Lock as my Alfred activation key. I previous used Karabiner Elements to hook up F19 to Alfred, but discovered that it was overkill for this simple use case. 

 

Hyperkey allows me to map Caps Locks to F19 as my Hyperkey, and then F19 to Alfred without all the deep system modification:

 

Here's the crazy awesome tie-up between Alfred 4.5 and Hyperkey: if you include "shift" in your Hyperkey setup, you can now activate Alfred 4.5's Universal Actions by pressing shift and then Caps Lock... easily the easiest keyboard combo you can imagine.

 

Of course, would be cool if Alfred enabled this natively, but meanwhile, pretty stoked about this!

Edited July 5, 2021 by Chris Messina
added bold

[Kupe]

Really interesting, ... but what's wrong with (for example) double tap shift key, ... ? Does this limit use of Hyperkey for other things?

 

 

[Chris Messina]

9 hours ago, Kupe said:

wrong with (for example) double tap shift key, ... ? Does this limit use of Hyperkey for other things?

 

I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with that — it's more a matter of personal preference. For me, having a single key (Caps Lock) dedicated to Alfred was a game changer; adding a modifier to Caps Lock to invoke Universal Actions is just a way to build on the muscle memory I've already developed!

[Kupe]

Yes, ... no argument with getting a system that works for you ... and universal actions seems a big step up on my preliminary play. I was trying to ask does your setup mean you have forgone Hyperkey as the start point for shortcuts and so you are using Alfred for all (most) of you automation, searches, actions etc.

 

I am a dummy so I wondered if I was not understanding your set up accurately. Are you maintaining something similar to what you have done before?

 

I have done a reorganisation and experimenting with using F7 to invoke Universal actions, with the benefit of only one keystroke ... and might even move this to F1 if I find I start using Universal Actions a lot.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Kupe

[Chris Messina]

38 minutes ago, Kupe said:

I am a dummy so I wondered if I was not understanding your set up accurately. Are you maintaining something similar to what you have done before?

 

For the longest time I used command-space for Alfred... but then when I found that I could activate it with a single key, and one that has an enormous tap area and that I never use (i.e. Caps Lock), I installed Karabiner Elements just for that feature.

 

Then when I talked to Ryan Hanson about his new app Charmstone, he introduced me to his Hyperkey app (I wasn't familiar with the concept previously), and made it possible to uninstall Karabiner Elements (it's overkill for my needs) and just use his app.

 

Then Alfred 4.5 w/ Universal Actions dropped — and previously I always struggled to learn the "pass the current selection to Alfred" keyboard shortcut, so felt like I'd been missing a lot of Alfred's power. When I discovered that I could just modify Caps Lock with Shift, the proximity and ease of access just seemed like a major benefit that brought it all together. That's why I'm excited about: there was a string of things that happened over time that not only simplifies my setup & configuration but also makes it more powerful!

[iandol]

 

23 hours ago, Kupe said:

Does this limit use of Hyperkey for other things?

 

At least with BetterTouchTool you can assign different functions when the hyper key is held down or released. So for example:

Assign Caps lock to hyper key, and on release map it to a named trigger which sends F18 (BTT doesn't support F19):

 

Then setup F18 in Alfred to trigger. Now you can use hyperkey shortcuts or just trigger Alfred on release... But as the hyper key includes the shift key in my setup I don't think I can add in the shift+hyper universal action trigger, though I can easily assign something like hyper+a so it isn't such an issue.

Edited July 6, 2021 by iandol

[Chris Messina]

Ah, helpful. Thanks for that! I think I used BetterTouchTool once before, but I haven't in some time. Useful to see many routes to achieve different levels of keyboard productivity! 🧠

[iandol]

And thanks for prompting me to try to switch from ⌘space, I'm still struggling with years of muscle memory, but theoretically I do like the idea of [caps lock] as the Alfred trigger 🤪

[Chris Messina]

10 hours ago, iandol said:

And thanks for prompting me to try to switch from ⌘space, I'm still struggling with years of muscle memory, but theoretically I do like the idea of [caps lock] as the Alfred trigger 🤪

 

Hey, if I could remap my muscle memory, so can you!  Try it for a week!

[Jono]

I've used Karabiner Elements in the past, as well as BTT but for some reason the Hyper Key was always buggy (hit and miss) with them.

 

Just tried this and it works a charm, thanks!

[ashyaura]

I don't get how you made it equal just one key (CAPS LOCK [using hyperkey by Ryan] = ALFRED), when I try to enter F19 as the alfred hotkey it doesn't let me (more like I cannot find it on my MacBook Pro lmao). I currently have alfred hotkey set to caps lock + A, it would be great if it was just caps lock. Could you explain in more detail, like how you got the alfred hotkey to equal F19?

[Chris Messina]

Here are my Hyperkey settings (not sure why you can't set Remap your caps lock key to f19):

This is my Alfred setting:

 

 

Once you configure Hyperkey, you should be able to just press "Caps Lock" when setting your Alfred Hotkey.