Your Custom Text Here
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve released a couple more videos, finishing my mini-dive into DEVONthink, as well as a more laid-back one showing you how to access Movie and TV information quickly with Alfred. I really love that workflow and it’s super simple to install.
Links are below - I hope you like
Searching with DEVONthink
Ever get frustrated with trying to remember the shortcuts to type certain emojis? Does remembering Control + Command + Space to load the Emoji Picker on macOS get frustrating when it’s similar to other shortcuts you use more often?
Well if you use Alfred, there is a workflow you can download and install to solve this problem for you. Once installed, simply type emoji plus the name of the emoji you want, and Alfred will return the result, ready for you to paste into your application.
Here is a very short video showing you how to use it.
If, like me, you are an ardent DEVONthink user - yet want to use Alfred to search for your files, then look no further. The clever people in the Alfred fan-base have created a workflow that links these two apps together and I thought I’d create a video to walk you through how to use it.
Enjoy.
Whenever I need to search for anything, whether it’s on my Mac or online - I use Alfred. It’s so ingrained in my muscle memory I’d have to work incredibly hard to STOP my fingers from travelling directly to my Alfred hotkey and kicking off a search.
Alfred has a large number of default search locations available online and they are listed below. You may, however, need to create your own custom search. And this is very easy
Let’s take an example. As the majority of you know, I create lots of videos for Screencasts Online and regularly need to research different apps. The first step I usually take involves searching the ScreenCasts Online website to confirm that the app hasn’t already been covered - and if it has, when was it done? Does it need an update/refresher video?
Opening Alfred and searching ScreenCasts Online for that app is the way to go and this is how to do it.
1 - Carry out a search on the site you wish to add
Open up the website and search for something. In this case, I’ve opened ScreenCasts Online and searched for Alfred. The URL is displayed in the screenshot below
2 - Copy the URL
Press Command + L to go to the address bar and then Command + C to copy the URL to your clipboard. This will need to go into Alfred.
3 - Invoke Alfred -> Features -> Web Search
From here, click on Add Custom Search in the bottom right hand corner
4 - Paste the URL
In the first field, named Search URL, paste in the URL you just copied with Command + V. Be sure to replace the search term with the query in curly brackets, as below. Instructions are there underneath the field. You could, alternatively, just type in the name of the domain and press the Lookup button and if the site supports OpenSearch or SearchAction, Alfred can find the correct URL automatically.
5 - Assign a Title and Keyword
Give the Custom Action a title - this is what is going to be shown in the search results. Then assign the keyword, or the abbreviation, that will be used to instigate the search.
6 - Test
Some text is already filled in the validation field - Alfredapp - and if you click the Test button to the right, then Alfred will carry out a test search on that site.
If it works, click Save.
Now, when you invoke Alfred and type in the keyword you specified, followed by the search criteria, Alfred will do the work for you.
It’s a great feature and another reason I love Alfred.
I have to send a reasonable number of invoices overseas and this always results in me needing to covert currencies - whether it’s USD, EUR or any other, it’s shady to have a workflow to make this as simple as possible.
Enter Alfred.
I wanted the ability to invoke Alfred and get the currency conversion I needed with just a few taps. So here is how to do that:
1 - Download this amazing Alfred workflow from sqren
2 - Double click the downloaded file. This will add it to your Alfred workflows section (if you are a Powerpack user of course)
3 - Select a category to add this workflow to from the dropdown bar. I generally use Tools (1) for this kind of utility and click Import (2)
4 - Next, you need to double click on the Script Filter
5 - On the resulting popup window, there are two potential actions to take. The first is to decide on the keyword that will be used to invoke the currency converter workflow. By default, it’s c (1) but you can change this.
Next, you need to define the default currency - so your base currency that you will generally always have a constant as being converted to. Enter the three-digit code for this (2) and click Save.
6 - You are done! Invoke Alfred with your hotkey and type c followed by an amount and currency, say 30USD - and you will see the output and, if you press Enter, this will be copied to your clipboard.
Quick, simple.
I’ve prepped a quick YouTube video below so you can see this in action.