Posts tagged with "alfred"

Screen Sharing For Alfred Brings VNC To Your Fingertips

Screen Sharing is a feature built into Mac OS X for remotely controlling another computer through the use of virtual network computing (VNC). Apple’s native screen sharing client is buried in the operating system making it nearly impossible to find the app when you actually need it. On top of that, it really lacks basic features like being able to store a connection for future use. Due to these shortcomings, most people turn to third party applications for managing their VNC connections. A quick search in the Mac App Store will turn up some pretty great options including Edovia’s Screens. Although apps like these work extremely well, not everyone wants to spend that much to easily connect to a remote computer. This is why I created the Screen Sharing for Alfred extension. I wanted Alfred to be able to function as my VNC client and really extend the functionality of the Apple’s native Screen Sharing app.

Screen Sharing for Alfred adds the ability to store information about VNC connections and quickly access them with a simple keyboard command. It is written in a beautiful fusion of shell scripting and AppleScript so it is fast, efficient, and capable of interacting with the user through AppleScript’s GUI prompts. It also incorporates David Ferguson’s genius Extension Updater system in case any new features are added in the future. For those unfamiliar with Updater, it is an extension for Alfred that allows developers to make bug fixes and add new features to released extensions – then when users run Updater, it will download the latest version of any extensions that have updates available. Read more

Logging with Day One and Alfred

Yesterday, Brett Terpstra posted a fantastic little script to leverage Day One’s built-in CLI (command line interface, more information available here) to create new journal entries from the Terminal or an app launcher. Brett has posted instructions on how to use Launchbar with the script, or skip the app launcher part altogether and go with the Mac’s Terminal instead:

Day One already has a quick entry palette in the menubar. It also has a command line interface (/usr/local/bin/dayone)1 which provides some geeky options (try dayone in Terminal) and the flexibility needed to replace my current logging system. You can create entries quickly with either method, but I wanted just a little bit more out of it. I built a quick script which allows a basic syntax for starring entries and defining dates (using natural language) inline in the entry itself. It can be used from the command line, from LaunchBar (or similar) and can be incorporated into just about any scriptable workflow.

I wanted to make the script work with Alfred, my app launcher and navigation tool of choice, and it turns out the effort to modify Brett’s script is equal to zero. I simply replaced “on handle_string(message)” with “on alfred_script(q)” and “end handle_string” with “end alfred_script” to make it work in Alfred. Obviously, you’ll need to fill in the path to your script after you’ve followed Brett’s instructions.

The three Day One entries above were created (and starred) using Alfred.

Before you create a new Applescript extension in Alfred, don’t forget to download Brett’s script and make it executable in your desired location, and create a symlink for Day One’s CLI (Show Package Contents on Day One, then navigate to Contents/MacOS/dayone - that’s the CLI you have to symlink) in your usr/local/bin/ directory.

You can check out Brett’s post here, and catch up on our coverage for the latest version of the app, Day One 1.5 (Mac and iOS).

A Software Experiment

For the past couple of years, I’ve been using OmniFocus to keep track of my projects and tasks. I love OmniFocus: it is a trusted system from developers I respect with an amazing set of native apps, constantly updated to take advantage of the latest features Apple has to offer. Yet for as much as I’d trust OmniFocus to handle everything for me, when personal needs change, habits are re-imagined and your workflow has to be finely tuned in a different way, software that is not meant for the purpose can only cover so much before you figure out it’s time to move on.

In the past months, some things changed in my personal life, I started a couple of new projects (including the next two iterations of MacStories), hired new people, and started helping out my girlfriend more with her job, too. To keep track of all this, I used to rely on OmniFocus, which worked extremely well until I realized I wasn’t really following any GTD methodology anymore and I had tweaked the app and made compromises with the software that turned OF into a beast it really isn’t. At the same time, I realized a part of my job – writing for this site – just can’t fit into OmniFocus’ style, at least not in the way I work. Which is to say, my colleagues use OmniFocus to manage their articles, and it works pretty well for them.

I compromised because I love OmniFocus too much. I have a deep respect for The Omni Group – a piece of history in Apple’s third-party development scene – and I have spent hours just browsing the company’s forums to read more about how people use Omni Group apps to get things done. I have dedicated Evernote notebooks just for OmniFocus and OmniOutliner, full with tips, stories, AppleScripts and lots of other cool resources. But it comes a point when, even if a specific software is flexible enough to allow for a huge amount of customization, spending hours learning and tweaking isn’t worth it anymore, especially when you have actual work to get done and people to report to. And tweaking is not getting work done, although it can give you such illusion sometimes.

I’ve been working exclusively from my iPad and iPhone for the past two months. Most recently, I got back to writing full-time again and decided to use my iPad for that, too. In this short period of time, I have used a different set of tools than OmniFocus to get things done, and this ‘experiment’ seems to be working so far.

I don’t blame it on OmniFocus. Like I said that app is fantastic, and version 2.0 is on my wish list of apps I’m looking forward to this year. I kept denying this, but the way I work (and, more generally, live) has changed in the last months of 2011; the app I used to manage my tasks wasn’t the perfect tool for the job anymore. So I stopped tweaking and moved on.

I’m now using a combination of Remember The Milk, Todo.txt and iCloud calendar. This setup is very simple, really, and I can assure you it’s more straightforward then what I had done with OmniFocus over the years. Read more

Extending Evernote: AppleScripts for Chrome, Safari, Instapaper and Alfred

Evernote is a cross-platform note taking solution that is adored by many for its ability to not just store snippets of information but also serve as an external brain. Among the many reasons users are drawn to this product is its extensibility. You may not realize this but Evernote has a very in-depth AppleScript dictionary that you can use to extend the feature set and make it do some pretty neat things you can’t do with it out of the box. I am going to show you how simple AppleScripting can add a few cool features to your Evernote workflow.

Note: These scripts work best when called with a global keyboard shortcut using an app like Keyboard Maestro, FastScripts, or Alfred.

This first AppleScript is used for storing a URL to whatever webpage you are currently viewing and it works with Safari, Chrome, and Chrome Canary. By default Evernote stores the entire webpage including images, navigational menus, and even advertising links. Having a snapshot of a page is great for some situations, but most of the time you just want to grab a link to the site and safely store it in Evernote so it can be easily retrieved. This script will check to see which browsers are running and it will grab the frontmost tab from the browser that is currently active; it’ll then neatly format the information into a note with the proper title and source url, and automatically sync Evernote.

Here is an example of a page I enjoyed and wanted to be able to find again at a later time. Everything is neatly formatted with no extra fluff.

URL to Evernote

URL to Evernote

Here is an example macro to launch it from Keyboard Maestro:

Download the script: Webpage Link to Evernote AppleScript Read more

Customize Your Mac’s “Paste and Match Style”

On the Mac, the paste function associated with the CMD + V keyboard shortcut has a well-known side effect: if you’re writing a document and you paste something from your clipboard, the document’s style won’t be automatically matched. Quite possibly a “feature” per Apple’s design choice, since I switched to the Mac I’ve always been annoyed by such “remember every style” behavior, and from the reaction I’ve seen on Twitter, it turns out quite a few people dislike when they end up with weird styles in their outlines or email messages as well.

But, you might argue, there is a way to paste and match style, and that’s represented by the ⌥⇧⌘V shortcut…which requires four fingers to execute, and it’s not always implemented in the same way in third party apps. Chrome, for instance, uses ⇧⌘V, and many other apps follow a similar trend to modify the default shortcut for Paste and Match Style.

In the past few days, I’ve come across some interesting solutions to unify Paste and Match Style with a simpler keyboard shortcut, and make it the default paste action on OS X if you never want to paste with “styles”. This can be particularly handy for writers, who often prefer a plain text environment or a styled one that’s, however, consistent throughout a document. Read more

Alfred for Mac Gets Extensions, Growl Support, New Lion Theme

Alfred, the application launcher for the Mac, received a fairly substantial update today which brings important new functionalities such as extension support, Growl integration for action outputs, a new theme inspired by OS X Lion, and several bug fixes. Personally, I’ve been a big fan of Alfred since its first release last year, and I’ve followed the development closely as I switched from Quicksilver (which came back from a long hiatus a few months ago) and started looking into the customizable search and launch environment offered by Alfred. In the past months, in fact, Alfred evolved into a minimal, yet powerful application launcher capable of doing a bunch of other things such as filesystem navigation, clipboard management, AppleScript launching and dictionary. I was particularly impressed with the 0.9 version, which allowed users to assign a keyboard shortcut to any AppleScript on your machine, similarly to how the popular FastScripts lets you pair a shortcut with a script.

Whilst the developers are still planning a major 1.0 release that will likely see the Powerpack (a set of premium additional features) become available as in-app purchase on Lion’s Mac App Store, Alfred 0.9.9 has been publicly released today and, in spite of what the version number suggests, it is a milestone release that sets the path for future Alfred versions and the kind of integration with the system the developers are willing to bake into their application launcher . Read more

Alfred for Mac Adds Sync, Launches AppleScripts with Keyboard Shortcuts

We’re huge fans of Alfred here at MacStories. The minimal launcher for Mac that was released as an alternative to Launchbar and Spotlight quickly evolved into a full-featured solution to browse files, play music from iTunes, manage your system clipboard and check on dictionary definitions. Alfred hasn’t officially reached the 1.0 status, yet the developers iterated so fast in the past months that Alfred has turned into a powerful application launcher packed with functionalities aimed at getting things done using only the keyboard. Looking back at previous Alfred releases, it’s amazing to see how the app went from being a simple way to launch apps to a tool tailored to both casual and power users, thanks to the possibility of creating custom searches, shortening links, browsing the filesystem, and more. The latest stable release of Alfred, 0.9, adds a number of improvements that greatly enhance the feature set of the app.

Alfred 0.9 can now launch any AppleScript on your Mac with a keyboard shortcut. Similarly to how the excellent FastScripts enables you to assign commands to scripts saved locally, the new Global Hotkeys section in the app’s preferences lets you assign a shortcut to a specific script, and run it when Alfred is open without seeing Alfred’s actual window. Just hit the shortcut anywhere on your Mac, and the script will execute. This is true for AppleScripts, files, and apps; being able to run AppleScripts through the app you’re already using for many other things is a very welcome addition, but it’s exclusive to those who bought the Powerpack, which is highly recommended if you want to get the most out of Alfred.

Version 0.9 also comes with Dropbox and iDisk sync, meaning you’ll finally be able to keep Alfred’s settings in sync between different Macs. The app can sync themes, snippets, scripts and custom sites. Alongside iTunes Mini Player improvements, a redesigned Preferences window and several performance enhancements, Alfred 0.9 also introduces new Terminal functionalities: you can run your Terminal commands “silently behind the scenes”, as well as add your own icons to make Terminal commands look like native Alfred actions.

Overall, it’s undeniable Alfred keeps getting better on each release. We don’t know what’s coming in the final 1.0 version, but if previous updates are of any indication I guess the developers are working on something big for the major 1.0 milestone. In the meantime, you can get Alfred here for free, and buy the Powerpack for £12 ($20). Check out more screenshots and the full 0.9 changelog below. Read more

A Better Way To Search The Mac App Store

The Mac App Store is great and everything, but searching for a specific app might be an annoying procedure for many: open the Mac App Store, place the cursor in the search box (or hit CMD + F), type, wait, scan results. Wouldn’t it be great to do it from the keyboard, in seconds, from the app launcher / Spotlight replacement you use every day?

I use Alfred, and this tip has incredibly improved how I search for apps in the Mac App Store. In Alfred, in fact, you can create custom search queries for any website / search engine and assign them to a quick shortcut that can associate terms to the query. Like “google MacStories” will open a tab in your default browser with a Google search for MacStories, and so forth. With this same method, you can create a Mac App Store search query that will let you search for an app’s name directly in Alfred and have the search results page open automatically in the Mac App Store. Read more

Add Tasks To OmniFocus With Alfred→

Add Tasks To OmniFocus With Alfred

Don Southard shares an interesting tip on how to automatically fill OmniFocus’ Quick Entry window using Alfred, a Spotlight replacement for Mac:

Enter Alfred for Mac. A very handy tool that provides a very useful launch bar to OSX. The great thing about Alfred is that you can customize how and where it searches, allowing us the ability to integrate OmniFocus in to the utility. Another perk is that this method does not require OmniFocus to already be running to add a task. It is system wide and will wake up OmniFocus if necessary.

But why would you want to do that, when you can assign a keyboard shortcut to OmniFocus’s entry panel? Well, some people don’t want to remember dozens of shortcuts like we do. In this way, you only have to remember Alfred’s keyboard command (which most likely has replaced Spotlight’s default one on your computer) to get tasks into OmniFocus.

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