Introducing Alfred

There are plenty of launchers available for the Mac that expand on the functionality of Spotlight. They aim to allow you to use the keyboard to rapidly perform tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, running scripts, or opening and sending e-mail.

For many years the most popular and powerful launcher was Quicksilver by Blacktree Software. Unfortunately, due to other priorities, the development team have been unable to continue support for the application and as a result Quicksilver has fallen into obscurity. A number of new applications have attempted to fill the void, however none have had the right mix of simplicity and power to stand out from the crowd. Today I would like to introduce a new launcher called Alfred that I think shows real potential.

Before starting, I should note that I was not a heavy user of Quicksilver. I installed it a few times to see what all the fuss was about, but always felt it was too complex for day to day use. For me, a value adding application such as a launcher needs to be incredibly simple and intuitive. This is one of the main reasons why I like Alfred.

Alfred is currently still in beta and as a result is not yet feature complete, however it is already an incredibly useful application that I believe has the right balance between simplicity and power. Once installed an Alfred icon will appear in your menu-bar so you know that it is running. To activate Alfred press "Option + Space", which is good as it means Spotlight is still available as always by pressing "Cmd + Space".

Once activated the Alfred launcher will appear. From here you can enter your search criteria.

I thought I would start easy by searching for an application. As you can see from the images below a search for iTunes came back with two matches. The first is what I was looking for and can be opened by pressing "return", however a second option available is from my Internet bookmarks. To select the second option you can either browse down the list or use the hot key "Cmd + 2". 

The second test is e-mail. I use gmail and therefore when I type gmail in to Alfred I get the option to either open my inbox, or search my mail account for a keyword. In the example below I am searching my inbox for all mail related to LifeinTECH.

Alfred also works directly with maps, Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia, however this is just a taste, and the development team have big plans to increase the power of the application.

As Alfred is free I highly recommend you head over to their website and try it our for yourself. It is developers like this who guarantee the future of the Mac.

Update on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 9:30PM by Matt (LifeinTECH)

Just when we thought Quicksilver was gone, a new development team have taken on the challenge and released an update. So far reports from users have been mixed, however it does re-enable the preferences window which stopped working with the release of Snow Leopard. If you still miss Quicksilver I suggest you head over to the developers website to download the latest build B58 (3841).