![]() ![]() ![]() I like it because it behaves more like Quicksilver of old, but actually sees active development. Until it is, I'll take good execution on the basic 80% of functionality any day. I use Alfred because it support custom dictionaries, and easier web search (google, google maps, youtube stb.) but spotlight is better at searching in files. Windows-key search isn't quite there yet. As you type the name of an app Albert will show matching suggestions in real time. mpubot August 25, 2019, 9:58pm 1 Relay FM Mac Power Users 497: Spotlight, Alfred & LaunchBar - Relay FM macOS Spotlight feature has made serious strides in recent years, but many power users still turn to Alfred and LaunchBar for app launching, file searching and executing workflows. When you need it you press ctrl + space andet voilait’s there instantly, awaiting your keystrokes. IIRC it became tolerable around the time SSDs became standard. Albert, like most of the launchers in this list, spends the majority of its time hidden from view. Certainly the fundamental task is not intractable because Spotlight (Apple's search) has been Good Enough for a while. So I think the thing that makes it a little hard to understand Alfred, um, is that Alfred and Quicksilver and launch bar, and there are. If I were an app developer in this space I would not trust my core functionality to anything even remotely associated with the above, and I strongly suspect that the complexity of handling the long tail of functionality you mentioned has something to do with why the windows-key search experience sucks. I'm not familiar with Windows internals, so I should clarify: I'm talking about the search functionality invoked by typing after pressing the Windows key. There’s also the excellent Launchbar by Objective Development or even Keyboard Maestro. If the backend of Windows Search is amazing, why is the front-end user experience abysmal? The problems just don't seem like front end problems: the search is occasionally slow, it doesn't even reliably find installed programs by their name, and if the result pops up while your next keystroke is underway it will sometimes lose the result even if that keystroke is correct, and somehow finding the result again will require removing more than the single correct keystroke that made your desired result disappear. I’ve used Alfred for several years and it’s tedious to use a Mac without it.
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