Watch List — Play and manage local media and streams

[vitor]

Usage

Add files, series (folders), and streams (URLs) to your watchlist via the Universal Action.

Search through and play items from your list via the wlp keyword.

• ↩ Play.
• ⌃↩ Open the item’s URL in a web browser.
• ⌥↩ Download stream (requires Download Media) or rescan folder for audiovisual files.
• ⌘↩ Mark as watched without playing.
• ⇧↩ Add to temporary playlist. Repeat for all desired items then ↩ to play in order. An unplayed playlist resets after a few minutes.
• ⌘Y (or tap ⇧) Quick Look files and streams.
  

Sort your list in different ways with wls. Sorting is temporary and does not affect the main list’s order.

Add the frontmost browser URL to the list with wlb.

Manually edit the list via the wle keyword. A Text View will open for you to reorder and rename at will. Keep the initial six characters and colon together with a title. ⌘↩ to apply the changes.

Undo marking an item as watched via the wlu keyword. ↩ to mark not watched and try to recover from the trash.

If the item has an origin URL (shown in the subtitle):

• ⌘↩ Open URL in a web browser.
• ⌥↩ Copy to the clipboard.
• ⌘Y (or tap ⇧) Quick Look.
  

Subtitle reference:

There are three types of item: file, series, and stream. Each result has its name as the title. The subtitle details information following a template:

≈ (4) 𐄁 22m 32s 𐄁 691M 𐄁 /Some/Path

• ≈: Indicates item is a stream.
  • file: N/A.
  • series: N/A.
  • stream: Always present.
    
• (4): Number of elements.
  • file: N/A.
  • series: Remaining audiovisual files in folder.
  • stream: N/A for single items. Count of all items for playlists.
    
• 22m 32s: Running time.
  • file: Running time of file.
  • series: Running time of first audiovisual file in folder.
  • stream: Combined running time of all elements.
    
• 691M: Size.
  • file: Size of file.
  • series: Size of first audiovisual file in folder.
  • stream: N/A.
    
• /Some/Path: Path.
  • file: Path to file.
  • series: Path to folder.
  • stream: URL.
    
  
  

Supported Players

All media players are supported, but not all are able to play streams. mpv, IINA, and VLC are directly supported. With those, an item is not marked as watched if playback exits with a non-zero code. Take advantage of that to, for example, control when an item is marked as played and trashed. Disable the trashing behaviour entirely in the Workflow’s Configuration.

⤓ Install on the Alfred Gallery | Source

[vitor]

When reporting issues, please include your exact installed versions of:

• The Workflow.
• Alfred.
• macOS.
  

In addition to:

• The debugger output. Perform the failing action, click “Copy” on the top right and paste it here.
• Details on what you did, what happened, and what you expected to happen. A short video of the steps with the debugger open may help to find the problem faster.
  

Thank you. Accurate and thorough information is crucial for a proper diagnosis which allows me to help you better.

[vdesabou]

Thanks for this workflow, it is great!

[Ddyracer]

Wow, it wasn't working at all before you updated. Could be useful for marathon frying sessions, thx!

[vitor]

Thanks for this workflow, it is great!

 

Wow, it wasn't working at all before you updated. Could be useful for marathon frying sessions, thx!

 

Thank you both. I apologise for it not working before, I had changed a variable name last night that I forgot to update everywhere — I’ve only noticed it this morning when I tried to use it and it wasn’t working.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

I’m thinking of adding support for multiple lists (so you can have, for example, different lists for movies, short videos, and books), but this would require an extra step when adding to Alfred, even if I have a default list, so I’m still not sure if it’d be worth it (adding some friction seems to defeat the purpose of this, but on the other hand it could really be much more useful).

Edited April 12, 2013 by Vítor

[vitor]

Update.

It now outputs notifications (it’s nice to know the action you’ve selected got through).

When deleting files, instead of simply moving them to the trash, it uses applescript to delete them. This will give you both that satisfying “send to trash” sound and will give you greater flexibility, like having access to the Put Back option in the trash, or being able to press ⌘+Z to get the files to their original locations (you need to do it once for each file).

Edited April 17, 2013 by Vítor

[vitor]

Update.

 

Fixed a bug where it wouldn't delete files with single quotes in the name.

[vitor]

Update.

It now warns if you try to “play” and have no unwatched files.

[vitor]

Update.

 

Fixed a bug where it sometimes didn’t check correctly if you had unplayed files.

Also, if you use DownVid, it now has an option to add the downloaded video files directly to your watchlist.

Edited April 23, 2013 by Vítor

[smacnay]

Hi,

 

Perhaps I am missing something but I cannot add a filename to the list. I see no option to add to watchlist from the File menu in Finder. Did I do something wrong? This really looks like a neat workflow.

 

Thanks

[vitor]

You misunderstood — you do it from Alfred’s file actions, not the Finder’s file menu. Select the files you want, and then press the keyboard shortcut (I think the default is Cmd+Opt+\).

[vitor]

Update.

 

Fixed issue where files with '[]' in the name would not be marked as watched.

[vitor]

Big update. It’s now way more useful.

You’re no longer limited to blindly watching files in sequence, and having to constantly edit the list by hand when you want to watch a file that is not the immediate next one. Instead of using “wl” for everything, now each option has it’s own shortcut (don’t worry, they all start with “wl”, so you can still type just that to see what they are). You can now pick what files to act on, for either watching or marking as unwatched (they’ll still appear sequentially on the list, so there’s no extra work involved if you still want to watch them in order — just pick the first one).

The workflow also keeps track of files in a different way (so it’s easier to manage). It now uses two lists (“towatch” and “watched”), so you’ll probably want to run

rm "${HOME}/Library/Application Support/Alfred 2/Workflow Data/com.vitorgalvao.alfred.watchlist/watchlist.txt"

in a terminal, to get rid of the old file (there’s no problem if you don’t, it’ll just stay there, and won’t interfere with the rest of the functionality).

The “Show” option was also removed, as it was now somewhat redundant.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Vítor

[vitor]

Small update. It now shows a notification when a file is marked as unwatched.

[vitor]

Update. If you choose any of the options that let you pick from a list (“wlp” and “wlu”) and continue typing after it (don’t put a space, just continue typing), you’ll start filtering the names, so you can quickly find the ones you want.

[vitor]

Update. File order number no longer appears in details.

[vitor]

Update.

 

Solves issues with filenames that have special characters.

[vitor]

Another update, regarding the last one. More corrections regarding special characters.

[politicus]

Great workflow.

Thank you.

[vitor]

Update.

 

Notifications are no longer handled by Alfred.

[vitor]

Update.

Better handling of file deletions (will do it more reliably). It’ll also now delete them all at once, instead of in succession (meaning if you ⌘+Z, it’ll restore all the deleted files at once).

[vitor]

Update.

The notification will no longer steal focus.

[vitor]

Update.

It now uses terminal-notifier. This is a departure from my previous stance of having the workflow work completely with public domain code, triggered by the fact that the alternative I’ve build sometimes shows you a warning that interrupts you, due to not being digitally signed, as I currently do not have an Apple Mac Developer account.

I believe I’ve found a somewhat satisfactory way to handle the issues I had with this, though. All non-public-domain code sits right at the top of the workflow, under a “_licensed” directory. This way it’ll be dead-simple to know what you can use freely and what is somewhat restricted. I’m not completely satisfied with this solution, and if I ever find a suitable way to remove terminal-notifier and make all the code in the workflow 100% public domain (like someone willing to take notificator and signing it), that’s what I’ll do.

Since I’ve added that, I decided to make two other changes (one change and one addition) — it uses trash to delete files (you shouldn’t see any change functionally), and there’s a new “wli” option that uses mediainfo to show the filenames and durations, as opposed to filenames and filepaths. Selecting a file in this mode will be the same as using “wlp” (it will play the file and mark it as watched); it is, however, slower (it has to go through the extra operation of checking the duration of each video), which is why it is a separate option.

[politicus]

Would really love to be able to have multiple lists, so that I could type "wlp" "name of the playlist", then select the video in the list. 

Is such a feature in the works?

[vitor]

Would really love to be able to have multiple lists, so that I could type "wlp" "name of the playlist", then select the video in the list. 

Is such a feature in the works?

It is not, although I’ve considered it multiple times in the past. Ultimately, I always decide against it.

Multiple new commands would be needed, with multiple levels of interaction each — list lists, create new list, edit list, delete list, play file from list, and more. The Add to watchlist option would be somewhat impaired (needing yet another command — move to list), and wle, which is only there as a bit of last resort, would become central to managing everything. All this would lead to what I believe to be a crummy interface and experience. It would become akin to a todo app that uses files instead of text, and that is definitely not my goal for it.