Alfred app on macOS has been my companion for half a decade now. I am such a fan that I ended up buying their Lifetime plan, instead of the usual yearly one. If you work on macOS, this is one application I’d recommend over anything else.
I love the application for one major reason — Automation. There are a lot of actions I perform regularly on the computer, that can be easily automated with Alfred. A couple of minutes saved here and there can easily result into saving days every year. Today, I thought I’d share a few automation ideas that I use almost every day. Maybe it’ll help you too.
Toggle Dark Mode
I’m not a fan of macOS’ automatic appearance switching. One of the major reasons being the lighting around me is not always reflective of the position of the Sun. Many a time, my room is brightly lit while I’m burning the midnight oil. In those cases, having the ‘dark mode’ turned on doesn’t make sense. Additionally, I like to have the control to change the appearance at will, without having to hunt for a menu item. Simply invoke Alfred, type darkmode and I’m done.
Search for Royalty-Free Stock Images
Since I often have to work on website/application designs, or even publish blog posts like this, I end up having to query multiple sources for royalty-free images. Of course, it’s cumbersome to search each of them one-by-one. This workflow helps me search for what I am looking for, in one shot.
Download Workflow ⇣
Dig for DNS records for any website
Every time I end up customizing the DNS records for a website, I find it quite irritating to fire up the terminal every time I want to check if the change has already propagated. So, I decided to create this workflow to simplify the job.
Download Workflow ⇣
Convert from Base64 to SVG
This is a super quick way to convert any Base64 code in your clipboard into an SVG image, and save it on the desktop.
Download Workflow ⇣
Convert any unit to another
This is probably one of the first workflows I have ever downloaded. It makes my job extremely fast every time I need to convert one currency to another, in addition to many other measurement units.
Download Workflow ⇣
Generate ‘Lorem Ipsum’ text on the fly
When it comes to designing a website or an app, this workflow is a lifesaver. Just a few taps on the keyboard and ‘lorem ipsum’ text gets generated & pasted in a few seconds.
Download Workflow ⇣
Search for Workflows
Right now, I have about 40 workflows set up on Alfred, and sometimes I actually end up forgetting the workflows I have, or the keyword required to invoke one. For those rare cases, I invoke this workflow to query all the others and run them. Kinda ‘one ring to rule them all’ 😉
Visit Workflow ⇢
Needless to say, I love automation. Plus, even though I am not a trained software developer, I love to solve problems and write code. So, in case there’s a problem you’d like to get solved using Alfred but can’t figure out how, shoot a comment on this post and I’ll try my best to help you out.
