Alfred on windows

[shadowWalker]

Hi, everyone

So i'm a windows user, and i really like what this cool software does.

I really would like to have it on windows, so is there any chance that this will happen some day ?

[Tyler Eich]

Hi, everyone

So i'm a windows user, and i really like what this cool software does.

I really would like to have it on windows, so is there any chance that this will happen some day ?

 

As I understand it, this would be a HUGE undertaking. Alfred is very deeply integrated into the OS X architecture; it uses Spotlight to search, Quicklook for previews, and interfaces with the entire system for things like hotkeys and user selection.

 

It's a cool concept, but perhaps too difficult to see light any time soon.

 

Cheers 

[jdfwarrior]

Hi, everyone

So i'm a windows user, and i really like what this cool software does.

I really would like to have it on windows, so is there any chance that this will happen some day ?

 

As Tyler mentioned, this would be really difficult in for a Windows environment. Some parts may be easier to implement but the primary thing is Spotlight. Spotlight comes installed on every Mac and it's metadata server is what keeps everything on the Mac indexed and searchable, and really fast. Alfred relies on Spotlight's metadata and other API's custom to Mac OS X to search for all your files, contacts, bookmarks, etc. Writing something like this for Windows would require a lot of work and pretty much be a complete rewrite. As awesome as Andrew is, he our only developer and stays really busy with Alfred. 

[xybre]

As Tyler mentioned, this would be really difficult in for a Windows environment. Some parts may be easier to implement but the primary thing is Spotlight. Spotlight comes installed on every Mac and it's metadata server is what keeps everything on the Mac indexed and searchable, and really fast. Alfred relies on Spotlight's metadata and other API's custom to Mac OS X to search for all your files, contacts, bookmarks, etc. Writing something like this for Windows would require a lot of work and pretty much be a complete rewrite. As awesome as Andrew is, he our only developer and stays really busy with Alfred. 

 

It would require shuffling around the system calls, but in all fairness, Windows 7+ has an integrated feature very similar to Spotlight. In fact indexing has been around since at least Windows 2000.

The bigger issues would probably be the UI and other OS-level integration points. The sheer number of them overall, depending on the architecture could be pretty staggering. I'd love to have Alfred be cross-platform as well, but I can see that it might be difficult.

 

• Launchy is cross-platform and looks superficially similar: http://www.launchy.net/
• I used to use SlickRun on windows: http://bayden.com/slickrun/
• On Linux Krunner is built into KDE. There's gnome Do but its more similar to Quicksilver. There's also Synapse for Gnome. 
• Check out AlternativeTo for more possibilities: http://alternativeto.net/software/alfred/?platform=windows

Edited April 25, 2013 by xybre

[CheesecakeRecipe]

Hey all, wanted to revive this old topic and chip in my hopes for the impossible - to see Alfred take on Windows. Back in 2006 I ran mainly OS X workflows and Quicksilver had quickly become my favorite piece of software. Before I ended up switching back over to fully using Windows a year and a half ago I had the chance to try out Alfred and I fell in love with its simplicity and speed, but huge swiss army knife of built-in options. Every Windows machine i've touched since using Quicksilver has had Launchy installed on it as soon as I could. But unfortunatly Launchy has stagnated since 2010 and the plugin community has become equally dead. Its total feature set, even including a handful of plugins, pales in comparison to the power of programs like Quicksilver and Alfred.

 

We really need someone to step up to the task and create the next big productivity launcher/app on the Windows space. Launchy was drenched in love and awards when it came out, there's obviously some kind of demand out there for it. Whether it is Alfred, or someone else stumbling upon this very topic and post a year from now and getting inspired to build the next big productivity program for Windows. I just hope that one day we'll get to have something as beautiful, fast and fully-featured as Alfred/Quicksilver. I'd like to also give thanks to the Alfred team for making such a powerful app even if it's one I can't use.

[jdfwarrior]

Hey all, wanted to revive this old topic and chip in my hopes for the impossible - to see Alfred take on Windows. Back in 2006 I ran mainly OS X workflows and Quicksilver had quickly become my favorite piece of software. Before I ended up switching back over to fully using Windows a year and a half ago I had the chance to try out Alfred and I fell in love with its simplicity and speed, but huge swiss army knife of built-in options. Every Windows machine i've touched since using Quicksilver has had Launchy installed on it as soon as I could. But unfortunatly Launchy has stagnated since 2010 and the plugin community has become equally dead. Its total feature set, even including a handful of plugins, pales in comparison to the power of programs like Quicksilver and Alfred.

 

We really need someone to step up to the task and create the next big productivity launcher/app on the Windows space. Launchy was drenched in love and awards when it came out, there's obviously some kind of demand out there for it. Whether it is Alfred, or someone else stumbling upon this very topic and post a year from now and getting inspired to build the next big productivity program for Windows. I just hope that one day we'll get to have something as beautiful, fast and fully-featured as Alfred/Quicksilver. I'd like to also give thanks to the Alfred team for making such a powerful app even if it's one I can't use.

 

As mentioned before though, the down side of this is that Windows applications don't provide the API access and other features that OSX applications do. I'm not sure that Windows built in indexing that it does is available to other applications the way it is in OSX. Alfred uses Spotlight metadata to perform searches. So without some of these things, its a lot harder to build something for Windows that would provide the same functionality that Alfred can in OSX.

[maxtofa]

Maybe it could be possible to use a separate indexing engine like this: Lucene.net for the Spotlight replacement

 

So it could be used also on older machines (I'm an Alfred user at home but I have to use my old Windows XP machine at work....)

 

I'm not a C# programmer and I cannot even think to start a project like this buti I think that there is nothing similar to Alfred for Windows and it's a void that a well crafted app could fill.

[Tyler Eich]

One of my main concerns is related to Alfred's quality. Alfred is made exclusively for OS X, and it shows. Everything is thought through, consistent, and stable. Not coincidentally, nearly all of my favorite, most pleasurable apps work only on Apple products (Alfred, Safari, Pixelmator, Textmate, etc.)

 

If Alfred were ported to Windows, quality would undoubtedly be lost (on both platforms). Examples: iTunes, Firefox, Chrome, Wunderlist, Evernote, etc. While these apps are exceptional and very useful, they do not have the polish and pleasure of an OS X-only application.

 

There will always be a market for quick launchers on any platform. In my opinion, it would be better for another developer to make a quick launch app exclusively for Windows. That way, the program could be completely integrated into the Windows world. Everybody wins, and no quality is lost in trying to be everything to everybody.

 

Cheers

[deanishe]

I can't see this ever happening.

 

Alfred is extremely closely tied to OS X infrastructure, and leverages what OS X offers extremely effectively.

 

There's just nothing cross-platform about Alfred. You could probably bundle Windows versions of Python and Ruby relatively easily, but beyond that it's not just a question of re-implementing every other aspect of Alfred for Windows, but also of re-implementing a whole lot of stuff Alfred gets from OS X largely for free. And many workflows just wouldn't work.

 

Andrew would have to hire several developers to realise a Windows port. It's just not viable.

 

Your best hope is probably to try and kick-start an open-source project to build an Alfred-like counterpart for Windows.

[_Sascha_]

There is already a Alfred port avaiable for windows.

 

It called Wox and is a so called Alfred-clone.

 

But for indexing it need a third party application and don't work so well like Alfread already does.

 

I think Wox will grow more in the next years (because of the unix-shell of Win10).

But at the moment it is lightyears away from Alfred.

 

If the Alfred developer ported years ago into the windows-platform, I think it could have worked out.

But with Wox as OpenSource project now, I don't think it is a profitable platform anymore.