Search google, ebay, specific website and mac at the same time

[Daniel Herrera]

Hi, 

 

I hope someone please could help me with this, hopefully not such a silly question but I would like a workflow that searches a given keyword in: google, ebay, an specific website and the Mac at the same time with a hotkey. 

 

So far I can do the first three without a problem, but I cannot manage to get the workflow to search the mac as well at the same time. 

 

Here a snapshot of my workflow so far: http://cl.ly/image/3C3I1M0A2m1s

 

Any help or suggestion would be much appreciated. 

 

Regards

Daniel 

 

[deanishe]

Right, so you don't want the results in Alfred but somewhere else?
 
You need to use AppleScript to open the Spotlight window or a Finder window and do the search.
 
To run a search in Finder, add a Run Script action using language `/usr/bin/osascript` and the following content: 

set theQuery to "{query}"

tell application "Finder"
	open (POSIX file "/") as alias
	activate
	-- Change the delay to something long enough so that
	-- the Finder window is activated and receives the
	-- keystroke events
	delay 0.3
	tell application "System Events"
		tell process "Finder"
			set value of text field 1 of group 5 of toolbar 1 of front window to theQuery
			keystroke "f" using {command down}
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

 
Because the script is using GUI scripting, it's dependent on the way your Finder is set up. If CMD+F isn't your shortcut to do a search in Finder, change the corresponding line in the script. text field 1 of group 5... should be the right "address" for the search box in a non-customised Finder window, but you may have to adjust those values if you've added anything to Finder's toolbar (I need group 6 on my machine, for example).

 

If you want to search with Spotlight, not Finder, you can also do that using GUI scripting.

[Daniel Herrera]

Hi Deanishe, 

 

It's working, thank you 

 

Out of curiosity, instead of opening finder with the searched keyword, would it be possible that Albert shows it as Spotlight do? So that I can see the results searched in the mac while I'm tying the keyword? 

 

Thanks again for your help. 

 

Regards

Daniel 

[deanishe]

If you don't mind Albert's results, it's easy enough to open the search in Albert instead of Finder: 

tell application "Alfred 2" to search "{query}"

 If you want to show actual Spotlight results in Albert, you need to write a Script Filter based on mdfind (the command-line equivalent to Spotlight). This is considerably more complicated.

[Daniel Herrera]

Thanks.

How can I modify the script so that it opens finder only when a result is found and if possible to open a tab in an already open safari window instead of opening a new window?

Thank you again