Workflow Marketplace

[dobby007]

Have the Alfred developers ever thought about introducing a real marketplace for Alfred workflows? This is like the most inconvenient thing that I need to search for workflows on forums, buggy and outdated Packal site, GitHub, Google or whatever. Then I might wanna check if there are any updates to my workflows and here comes a real painful question: where did I download the workflow from?

 

It seems like a natural evolution of Alfred so I just trying to wrap my head around the reasons why this hasn't been introduced for so long time.

[Saez]

5 hours ago, dobby007 said:

Have the Alfred developers ever thought about introducing a real marketplace for Alfred workflows? This is like the most inconvenient thing that I need to search for workflows on forums, buggy and outdated Packal site, GitHub, Google or whatever. Then I might wanna check if there are any updates to my workflows and here comes a real painful question: where did I download the workflow from?

 

It seems like a natural evolution of Alfred so I just trying to wrap my head around the reasons why this hasn't been introduced for so long time.

That's a good idea.
Maybe some advanced users from here can curate the workflow (like App Store or Shortcuts) and make sure workflows keep updated and functional (inactivating older).
This could encourage other users share more and more useful workflows improving productivity with Alfred.
Also keep the community more active.

Another thing is create ability to voting/review workflow to encourage others to download it.

Ability to make creators create more, perhaps creating some system to affiliate or gain some credit to change by discount on upgrade to v5, anything like that.

And @dobby007 there is a way to make (with script or python) the workflow check if there is any update and auto-update, the creators just must implement it (I don't know how to do it, but I had some that update when tried to run.

[dobby007]

3 hours ago, Saez said:

And @dobby007 there is a way to make (with script or python) the workflow check if there is any update and auto-update, the creators just must implement it (I don't know how to do it, but I had some that update when tried to run.

There is a plenty of ways how to do it if you can write code. The problem is... You have to do it by yourself every time with every workflow you want to publish. Probably it's even going to incur additional expenses in terms of spinning up your own servers to serve updates.

Edited January 3, 2022 by dobby007

[Saez]

Just now, dobby007 said:

There is a plenty of ways how to do it if you can write code. The problem is... You have to do it by yourself every time with every workflow you want to publish.

I just found a way using OneUpdater provided by a workflow from @vitor.
It's working now

[dobby007]

2 minutes ago, Saez said:

I just found a way using OneUpdater provided by a workflow from @vitor.
It's working now

It needs to be a built-in feature. Just like another tab in the Alfred preferences where you can purchase or download some new workflows. It doesn't have to be too sophisticated for now. I believe integration with Packal API will be enough. It just has to be really naive and simple for users to find new workflows and that's it. That's my thoughts.